


Sand and Light

by Sholio



Category: Trigun
Genre: Canon - Anime, Epic, F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-08-27
Updated: 2001-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 129,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years after the end of events in the Trigun anime, Vash walked back into Milly and Meryl's lives. And everything changed ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Mother and Child

"Mommie, I'm scared."

"You don't have to be afraid, Alex, love. It'll be just like going to sleep."

"Is it really like sleeping, Mommie?"

"Yes, and you'll dream wonderful dreams."

"Will Daddy be in my dreams?"

A shadow passed over the eyes of the woman in coveralls, and her voice was a bit hoarse when she replied, "I hope so, darling. I know he's in mine."

"Will it hurt, Mommie?"

"No, not at all. There might be a few little tickles while I put on the electrodes... see?"

"Mommie, it feels like bugs are crawling on my skin!"

"I'm not scaring you, am I? I can stop until you get used to the feeling."

"No. It feels funny, but I'm a big boy."

"Yes, you are. You are so brave, darling!"

"Would Daddy be proud of me, do you think?"

She leaned over and kissed the little boy beneath his dark bangs. "Daddy is proud of you every day, Alex. He is watching from Heaven, and I know his heart swells with pride every time he looks at you and sees what a fine young man you have grown to be."

"I'm... sleepy, Mommie."

"See? It's just like going to sleep. What you're feeling is a special kind of medicine that helps you sleep even if you're not sleepy to begin with."

"Like... like the doctors gave you after Daddy's accident, Mommie?" The little boy yawned. His voice was very quiet now.

"Yes, Alex," the woman whispered. "Just like that."

"Good night, Mommie..."

"Good night, Alex. When you wake up, you and I will be standing on the new world. Dream of that, my son..."

She stroked his hair until his eyes closed. "Alex?" she said softly, and then more loudly, "Alex?" There was no response, so she worked quickly, attaching the rest of the wires, and tapping in the arterial shunts. Her son's skin went from vibrant pink to pale gray as the blood drained out of his body and chemicals replaced it.

"Sleep tight," she whispered. "Don't let the bedbugs bite."

She straightened up and closed the door of the coldsleep chamber, checking to make sure that all the readouts were green, even though she knew that the sensitive computer monitors would detect and report any problems long before the human technicians. She placed her hand against the cool plastiglass, one last time, gazing at the child's pale face with its dark-lashed eyes -- a face she would not see again for years of her subjective time ... and decades or centuries of real time. Then she stood, and thumbed the toggle implanted beneath her ear. "The last of the passengers are in coldsleep."

"Good work, Rem. Thanks. What about you?"

"I won't be traveling on this ship, Tony. I'll be on the flagship. I'm one of the caretakers."

"Oh!" She heard the surprise in the pilot's voice. "I didn't know you'd made the cut. Congratulations, Rem!"

Congratulations... Rem blinked her eyes hard. Yes, she'd won a great honor... the honor of watching her home -- the home of all humanity, the place where her husband's mortal remains were buried -- vanishing forever into the sea of stars. An honor.

"Want me to wait 'til you get to the bridge before I turn off the gravity now?"

"No, go ahead. I'll be fine. Thanks, though."

Rem Saverem reached for one of the handholds with the unthinking ease of one used to frequent transitions between gravity and zero-g. Some people panicked when they felt their feet start to drift off the floor, but Rem experienced no discomfort or disorientation, merely tucked her feet up and let her arms do the work of keeping her anchored. She was lucky that way. One reason she'd been chosen to be part of the waking crew.

An honor.

She started back up the great central column, pulling herself adeptly along towards the lift that would take her to the bridge. The sleeping passengers surrounded her... row upon row of the plastiglass capsules, mounted upon a modified version of the freight spindles that dragged cargo through hard vacuum. Rem tried not to dwell upon that analogy, just as she tried not to dwell upon the resemblance of the capsules to the coffin in which her husband had lain when she last saw his face.

I'm sorry for this indignity, my people, she thought as she drifted past their sleeping forms. Hopefully this will be the last time you'll be dehumanized like this. When you wake, you'll walk on a world where each of you will be free, and the mistakes of our ancestors will be left behind along with the dying world.

She looked over her shoulder as she climbed, gazing down the great length of the spindle and through the plasticine bubble at its other end. She could see an arm of Mars Base, and beyond it, the ruddy curve of Mars itself. Beyond that, the stars.

It all looked so peaceful from up here. It didn't look like a solar system poisoned beyond all capacity to support human life.

Tiny against the bulk of the spindle, Rem Saverem stared out at the dying solar system, and finally allowed herself the mercy of the tears that she would not shed in front of her son. She tucked her bare feet up under her and allowed herself to float free, while her tears drifted in a glittering cloud around her face.


	2. Light a Candle

He came here often, for no reason he could name.

The place hadn't changed much over the last six years. Maybe it was a little brighter, a little cleaner. Sometimes he helped out... put on a fresh coat of paint, washed the floor, replaced a pane of glass, whatever the priests told him needed to be done. They all knew him now. They knew he always left something in the offering box, and lit a single candle and went away.

The floor had long since been washed clean of every trace of blood, but he could still trace its outlines in his mind, and knelt on that place, as he always did.

So much blood. There had been so much blood. No human being could lose that much blood and live.

He told himself that often, and most of the time, he believed himself.

Sometimes he came here because he needed someone to talk to, and that was more and more often lately. He could not shake the uneasiness haunting his soul. Often he woke from terrifying dreams that he could not remember, shaking and sweaty. Sometimes he found his gaze going to the horizon for no reason, staring toward July. Yesterday he had looked down at his right hand to find that the skin had turned white as a dead man's, and softly spiky with feathers around the fingertips... terrified, he fought back the light he feared so much, until his hand was normal flesh and bone again...

Something was happening.

"Do you feel it too, Wolfwood?" he whispered, gazing at the candlelight flickering on the altar. "It's been six years since you died. Are you still watching us? Do you ever think of us, in whatever place you've gone..."

Six years to the day, he thought. A lot has changed since then. A lot hasn't...

"Mr. Vash?"

His head came up.

He knew that voice, and it brought a smile to his face, even though the once-chirpy voice had lost much of its youthful vigor, become calmer, more controlled. He looked over his shoulder at the sole occupant of the pews.

She wore a black veil and her head was bowed, but she raised it when he looked her way.

"Didn't you see me, Mr. Vash? You walked right by!"

He had seen her, but hadn't recognized her with the veil, and didn't want to intrude on whatever private grief she bore.

"I'm sorry, Millie -- I had a lot on my mind."

Millie laughed, just as she used to, and came over to hug him.

"Vash! It's been so long. Do you come here a lot?"

"Sometimes. When I need to think things through, or ... talk to someone. Do you?"

"Sometimes," she said, her blue eyes darkening with the briefest shadow. She giggled. "It's amazing we haven't run into each other!"

"Big world," Vash agreed, smiling. Suddenly the smile fell from his face and he gripped her arm.

"Mr. Vash? What's wrong?"

"Get behind me," he whispered. "There's someone over there... by the door. I heard them move."

To his surprise, she only laughed. "I know. Ellie! Stop sneaking around and come out! You're scaring Mr. Vash."

A hesitation, then a shock of spiky black hair appeared over one of the pews.

"Mom! I'm chasin' bandits."

"Ellie, Mr. Vash is an old friend of Mommie's. Come over here and meet him."

Ellie skulked out from behind the pew. Vash's breath caught in his throat. _Millie has a child?_ And he knew whose child... he would have known even without seeing the unruly black hair, the piercing blue eyes glaring defiantly at the world.

"Ellie, say hello to Mr. Vash."

"'Lo," Ellie mumbled, kicking at the floor. "C'n I be excused?"

"Honey, be polite."

"C'n I be excused, please." The child peeked up at Vash through her bangs, with cool blue eyes so familiar that the old pain, never quite gone, constricted Vash's heart. "Nice to meetcha," she added in a burst of magnanimity.

"Nice to meet you, too," Vash said.

"Why don't we all go outside in the sun?" Millie asked. "If you'd like to, Mr. Vash. If you're finished."

"I think I've done everything I need to do in here."

Ellie ran outside ahead of them, and immediately vanished into the rocks around the church door.

"Watch out for snakes! And don't get too much sun!" Millie called after her, ineffectually. She looked over at Vash, and smiled an apology. "She's going through a difficult time, I think. She's a very good child, really."

"I don't doubt it," Vash said.

They wandered away from the church. Vash kept stealing glances at Millie, trying not to seem as if he was staring. She seemed to have aged much more than six years since he had last seen her, but rather than making her haggard, the tracks of too many years and too much pain had given her face the mature, ageless beauty that only a few women achieve. He never would have thought to see that look on Millie's face. Her hair was still long, but pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail beneath the veil.

"Her name is Ellen, meaning light," Millie said after a while.

"She looks a lot like him." Vash winced as the words left his mouth. _Way to go, Mr. Tact._

Millie just smiled, and her smile too had lost its carefree joy and gained a new maturity, no less sad for all its beauty. "More so every day."

He cleared his throat. "Do you -- still work for Bernardelli's?"

Millie shook her head. "No. I couldn't handle the overtime and traveling anymore, not with a small child. I got a job as a live-in nurse for an old lady, a friend of the family, back home. But she... passed on... a few months ago, so I came back here."

"You live here?" Vash asked, surprised. "I mean... I'd think this place would have so many bad memories for you." He bit his lip. _Strike two, Mr. Tact._

Millie looked down at her hands. "It does, but... good ones too. I think I grew up here. I changed so much... I never really found the me that I used to be, after I left here. I think maybe I came back to try to get in touch with my younger self." She looked up at him, her blue eyes a little too bright. "Does that make sense?"

"More than you know," Vash said.

"I never understood..." Millie twisted her skirt in her hands, over and over. "I never understood why they took his body. Knives and Legato. I think I forgave them for killing him... and I forgave him for dying... but I never really forgave them for that. Isn't that silly? But... it hurts, Mr. Vash, that I can't take my daughter to see her father's grave."

"I never understood that, either," Vash said. "It makes it harder to accept, I think. Not having something to bury, I mean..."

Millie nodded, and looked around automatically for her daughter, locating her not too far away. "So... what have you been doing, Mr. Vash?"

"Traveling. Like always. Here, there, everywhere."

"What about..." Her voice dropped. "Mr. Knives? Is he...?"

Vash sighed and gazed at the distant hills. "He's asleep. He hasn't awoken in the last six years, not even once. He doesn't eat... he doesn't drink... yet he doesn't waste away. I guess he'll wake up when he's ready, and not before."

"I wonder if a doctor could help him."

Vash looked away. "I doubt it. This is beyond any medical science on this world... maybe on any world. People like Knives and ... I mean, people like Knives... have a different physiology than people like you."

His unfinished sentence hung in the air: _People like Knives and me.._.

"But you need to eat, don't you, Mr. Vash?" Millie asked hesitantly.

He gave her a quick smile, his happy-friendly smile, the one Wolfwood had once commented on... "I eat, I drink, I use the bathroom, just like you. I'm not any different from you, Millie."

 _But I am. She knows it, and Meryl knows it, alone of any other people on this world._

Meryl...

"I was meaning to ask you," he said. "Have you heard from.... I mean..."

"Meryl?"

"Yeah."

Millie shook her head. "Not in a while. After I left the agency... well, Senpai doesn't write letters much, you know. She still traveled a lot, and we kind of just fell out of touch with each other... you know how it is."

"So she was still working for the agency, last time you saw her."

"Yes," Millie agreed. "And she wasn't married, Mr. Vash. She didn't have anyone at all."

Vash didn't miss the little glance she gave him, seeking a reaction. He didn't really have one at all, except a bit of sadness. He'd thought that Meryl, of all of them, had the best chance of being able to live a normal life after all they'd been through. But maybe a husband and kids weren't Meryl's idea of a normal life. As much as she claimed to hate adventure, Vash thought that she'd become slightly addicted to it, during their travels together.

Still, he had to admit to a slight hope, now dashed... that if Millie was here, Meryl might not be far away...

"So, I suppose you'll be leaving soon," Millie said.

"Yes, probably. You?"

"Probably. I'm just renting a place here. I don't think I want to raise Ellie so close to... you know."

Vash nodded.

Millie started to say something, stopped, started again, stopped. Vash had never seen her so hesitant to say something. Finally she blurted out, "You know, I don't have a job right now."

"I think you mentioned something like that."

"You wouldn't happen to... need help?"

"With?"

"Knives."

Vash looked at her in amazement.

"I have some experience as a caretaker," she said defensively.

"I know, but... I thought you didn't want a traveling life for Ellie. You know I have to keep moving."

"That was when she was little. She's old enough now. Besides, I'll be moving on soon, anyway. But it's dangerous for a woman and a little girl to travel alone."

Vash couldn't help laughing. "I've seen you fire that stungun! Somehow I feel more sorry for any bandits who try to pick on you..."

"Mr. Vash, that's just mean!"

"Sorry. Sorry."

"I just wanted to help." She stared at the ground, sticking out her lower lip like a child, and for a moment looked almost like the old Millie.

She's tired of being alone, Vash realized. And I am, too...

"Actually, now that I think about it, I could use some help," he said. "I would have mentioned it, but I didn't want to impose."

Millie looked up, her eyes bright again. "When can we leave?"

"Whenever you're ready," Vash said.

Millie smiled. "Will a few days be enough? I have some things to tie up around here."

"Like I said, whenever you're ready."

"Where are you staying?"

He pointed down into the town.

"That big red house?"

"No, the white one next to it."

Millie giggled. "Vash... I'm staying in the red one!"

He stared at her in amazement. "We must have passed each other dozens of times."

"Both wrapped up in our own worlds," Millie said.

She called for her daughter, and the three of them walked home. The shadows were lengthening into evening.

"You're sure about this?" Vash said. "You want your daughter to live the life of a vagabond?"

"Doing something useful to help others?" Millie retorted. "I can't think of anything I'd rather see her doing."

They parted ways in front of the two houses. "Tomorrow?" Millie said. "I need to do some shopping for the trip. You could come along. I don't mind."

Vash ran over his options in his head. Shopping with Millie... or staring at Knives' unresponsive form. Tough choice. Millie did have a slight edge, though.

"Eight?"

"Better be more like ten."

"You still like to sleep in, I see."

"Now that Senpai's not around to nag me."

They stood and stared at each other in the gathering dusk.

"Well, good night," said Millie.

"Good night."

They both stood there. Ellie held onto her mother's hand, watching the adults, confused.

Vash cleared his throat. "Unless the two of you would like to have dinner with me."

"Oh, how wonderful!" Millie cried. "We'd love that! Doesn't that sound nice, Ellie?"

"Yes'm," Ellie mumbled, in a tone that sounded as if she'd rather eat live lizards.

Vash floundered. "Of course... it's been a while since I've cooked for more than just myself..."

Millie smiled. "I'll help."

They went upstairs to Vash's rented rooms, and Vash lit a lamp while Millie looked around for a place to sit, finally settling on the bed. Ellie climbed up beside her.

"I'm sorry it's not much..."

Millie laughed, and it sounded almost like her old laugh. "Oh, we've been in much worse places than this, haven't we, Mr. Vash?"

Vash slowly answered her grin with one of his own. "Remember that fleabag hotel in Dromden Village?"

"Oh, the one where the rats ate Meryl's shoes during the night?"

"No, that was in May City. I think..."

They both laughed. Ellie, bored, had wandered over to investigate the window. "Oh, honey, be careful!" Millie cried, running to retrieve her.

"Mom! I'm not a baby!"

Watching them, Vash realized that he felt... good. For the first time since he could remember -- in years, maybe -- he really felt good. Happy. Light. And as always, whenever a pleasant mood began descending onto him, he thought instantly of the one thing that could destroy his happiness forever.

"I'd better go check on Knives."

Millie nodded. "I'll look around and start some dinner."

Vash went out into the darkened hall, refusing her offer of a light. Alone, he paused for a moment, leaning his forehead against the wall.

Millie!

He had invited her back here as a friend... hadn't he?

He wasn't quite sure, and that bothered him.

Deep down, he realized that he still thought of Millie as Wolfwood's girl. He knew, intellectually, that Wolfwood was never coming back, and he supported the whole idea of Millie getting on with her life. If he'd discovered that she was married, he would have felt nothing but happiness for her; in face, finding out that she wasn't saddened him in much the same way that Meryl being single saddened him. He would have loved to see either of them find happiness with anyone else.

In Millie's case, anyone but him. He just didn't think he could do it and look at himself in the mirror.

He'd just been alone so long...

The last thing poor Millie needs is you messing with her head because you're horny, he griped at himself, pushing open the door to Knives' room.

He froze.

The light... it had to be a trick of the light...

But the glow of the sunset through the window did not lie. The bed was rumpled, unkempt -- and empty.

Vash flattened himself against the door. Horror gripped his heart with bitter cold hands. He had to stop himself from looking over his shoulder... positive that Knives lurked in every shadow of the dark hallway, every corner of the bedroom...

He'd been so sure that he'd know. So positive that he would feel Knives' reawakened presence in the world that he had begun leaving him alone for longer and longer lengths of time. He hadn't even locked the door of the bedroom!

Oh, you fool, Vash berated himself. You utter, absolute fool.

To leave him alive because killing him would have broken your heart...

It's going to begin again now, Vash you fool. Remember the killings? The destruction? July? Augusta? The Gung-ho Guns? Brad? Wolfwood?

It's all going to begin again...


	3. Sand

The desert night had fallen long since, but the rocks still radiated the day's heat, and the air was warm despite a cool breeze blowing down out of the mountains. By the light of two moons, the desert landscape was almost as bright as day. An onlooker could have easily seen a spot of ghostly brightness wending its way through the rocks -- the unnatural sheen of moonlight gleaming from long blond hair. But there were no observers in this high, lonely country. Only the occasional lizard or nighthawk bore witness to Sand's climb.

She did not stop to look back, not even once. The view would have been beautiful if she had. The mountains fell away into a vast expanse of broken land, strewn with boulders many times larger than houses, presided over by wind-carved pillars and arches of red stone. In the moonlight, it resembled a weird and wonderful city built by some ancient race of giants.

Visitors to this place were few, since there was nothing much here except a collection of villages scraping out their tenuous existence by the rare oases -- but those hardy souls who did travel through the land of wind-carved stone came away with glowing descriptions of the place's raw natural beauty. On maps, it appeared by any of several poetic names: the Lost City, Painted Land, Paradise, New Tibet, Pillars of the Sky.

The locals called it God's Butthole, when they called it anything at all.

The locals were a sturdy, plain-spoken people. Salt of the earth; which is to say, stubborn as mules, unimaginative as mules, and just as tolerant of outsiders as rednecks anywhere.

Sand rubbed at the bruises on her face. She, like the locals, saw little beauty in this place. But at least they had their solidarity and sense of belonging to the group (a group of ignorant hillbillies in Sand's opinion, but she wasn't in a mood to be charitable).

Sand had nothing.

Even as she climbed deeper into the hills, she knew it wasn't true. She had Annie and Martha. Unlike most of the residents of the Painted Land, the two old women had lived elsewhere in their youth. They had gone to school; they'd seen other places, other lands, other ways of doing things. They could read, for heaven's sake. They had books.

Sand knew that if not for Annie and Martha, and their library, she would not have survived in this place.

 _Sand._

The voice. The voice was back.

Sand squeezed her eyes shut, willing the voice to go away. Sometimes it did, when she forced it. She stumbled on the sharp rocks and sat down suddenly on a boulder, staring up at the cliffsides of the ravine.

 _Sand._

Go away.

 _I'm your friend, Sand. Your only friend. I want to help you._

No you don't. You say cruel, hurtful things.

 _I have never been cruel to you, have I, Sand?_

No, but you say mean things about Annie and Martha. They're my friends, too.

 _I only want to help you. It hurts me to see how completely they've fooled you. Don't you know, they only want to use you and throw you--_

"Go away!" Sand cried aloud.

Her voice echoed off the canyon walls and died slowly in the ravine: go away... away... away...

 _Don't be like that,_ the Voice said.

Shut up. If you were really my friend, you'd leave me alone when I tell you to.

 _Sand, sometimes friends have to be a little forceful when someone they care about is doing self-destructive things. These people are very, very dangerous to you._

Go away! They care about me! They're my friends!

 _Was it friends who left those bruises on your cheek?_

Sand's hand raised involuntarily to the sore spot.

It wasn't Martha and Annie's fault, she thought angrily at the Voice. They've always tried to protect me from the cruel people who hurt me.

 _Where were they today, then?_

At home! They're old! They don't get out much! Stop it!

 _You were at the gate. They were in the house. Surely they could hear the raised voices. Surely they could come out if they'd wanted to help you._

All right. Maybe they were in the back room and didn't hear anything. Martha doesn't hear so well anymore, and Annie always takes a nap at that time of day. Or... or even if they heard and didn't come because they were afraid... that's not their fault! They're not very strong! I can stand up to the villagers much more easily than they can.

 _You seem so sure, but I can feel that little bit of doubt nibbling away at you..._

Shut up! You're a liar!

 _Ah, Sand, you forget that I'm in your head. I know you better than you know yourself._

In my head? Who are you, anyway? I know you're not me. I'd never think such hateful things.

 _Is that right? Maybe you just can't acknowledge your own feelings to yourself. Maybe you created me, an objective voice--_

You're not objective!

 _\--all right, maybe I'm not, but a concerned voice, one who can see things more clearly than you yourself. Maybe you need me to tell you the things you're afraid to admit to yourself._

I don't believe that you're part of me. You're real, all right. I just don't know why you want to mess up my life.

 _Mess up your life? Sand, it's already messed up, more horribly than you even seem to be aware. How can you continue to take their abuse like a doormat?_

I am not a doormat!

 _What did you do when they beat and hurt you? Hurt them back?_

No. Martha and Annie say it's wrong to hurt people.

 _Martha and Annie say so, do they? Maybe they just want to keep you weak, so they can control you_.

That's not true!

 _They're afraid of you._

Liar! Mean liar!

 _Is that a lie? Have you looked into their eyes lately? They are afraid of you, Sand._

...

 _You know I'm right._

...maybe a little bit.

 _Why are they afraid of you, Sand?_

Because... because I'm...

The hateful words rose up in her mind, and tears choked her. She hung her head in the moonlight, unable to stop the words from filling her head... the cruel words the men had shouted as they beat and kicked her...

Freak. Demon. Monster.

 _Because you're different?_ the Voice supplied gently.

Sand nodded, unable to speak. Tears dripped off her nose.

 _What did you do, that made them call you a freak?_

"I don't... I don't know..."

 _But you do know..._

"I grew up too fast," Sand whispered. "I... I'm only five, but everyone says... five-year-old human children don't look grown up like I do. And... and I only have to read a book once, and I remember every word. And I'm faster than any of the other kids, and stronger..."

 _Does that sound bad to you? Worthy of hate?_

"Well... everyone says..."

 _I don't care what everyone says. I care what you think. Do you think they're right? That you're a freak?_

"No... no, I -- I don't..."

 _Who named you Sand?_

"They... they did...the people in town..."

 _Why?_

She choked out, "Because... it's worthless... like me..."

 _But that's not true at all, Sand. That's what they believe about you, because you are not like them. But it's not true, is it? You don't feel that way about yourself, do you?_

"I... I don't know..."

 _They have taught you to hate yourself. Listen to me, Sand. You are not a freak. You are not worthless. They are the worthless ones, those insects, those parasites on the land._

"But..." she managed, through her sobs. "Martha and Annie raised me..."

 _So you could slave for them! Who does all their labor?_

"They're old... they can't manage the heavy work..."

 _Leaving you to sweat all day under the suns. Haul water. Chop wood. How fair is that?_

Sand sobbed quietly to herself.

 _Those old biddies know they have a good thing going with you, Sand. They've been using you, all this time. They protect you from the villagers only as much as they have to, in order to keep getting work out of you. Every once in a while they let the men beat you up to remind you how worthless they think you are... so you'll never come to your senses, never leave..._

"No," Sand whimpered. "No..."

 _They have no idea how special you really are, Sand._

"Me... special?"

 _They can't see the light that burns inside you._

"Light..."

 _You see it every night in your dreams._

"Yes, I do..."

 _Show them the light, Sand. You don't have to be alone anymore. What one of us sees, we all see. What one of us feels, we all feel. What one of us knows, we all know. None of us is ever alone._

"Not alone..." __

Show them what happens to people who hurt one of us. No one may hurt and abuse you. Stop taking that treatment! You don't have to! You're strong, Sand! Strong!

Sand didn't remember standing up, but she was on her feet, staring up at the moons. The crater on the fifth moon seemed to beckon her. She raised her arms over her head.

And it... happened.

The light...

She was staring into the moon's face, so hard her eyes hurt... and then she realized that the light wasn't coming from the moon, but from her... As she raised her arms above her head, entwining the fingers, they began to merge, becoming one great pillar of light towering over her... She felt the warmth sweep through her body, a feeling of wonder, of power, unlike anything she'd ever known. In that moment, she knew that she was strong. She knew she didn't have to bow to anyone. No one would ever hurt her again! She'd make them all pay!

Adrenaline flooded her body... like the orgasms she'd discovered, experimenting in secret... but it went on... and on... and ON until she didn't think she could stand it anymore...

...and there was a great light...

...and her head hurt so bad...

...and darkness...

Sand woke up slowly. She hurt all over. Every bone and muscle fiber ached. Even her face hurt.

She had to pry her eyes open with her fingers; they were gummed shut with dried tears, mucus and blood. After a couple of tries, she managed to sit up and look around her.

The first thing she noticed was that the suns had risen, and sunlight flooded the rocks around her. Then she became aware that things didn't look quite right anymore.

The canyon... what happened to the canyon?

It wasn't here. It simply wasn't here.

She was sitting in the middle of a giant crater.

"What the _hell._.." Sand whispered. Martha and Annie always scolded her for cursing, but she supposed that if cursing was ever appropriate, this had to be the time.

"Martha..." she said aloud. "Annie..." The words rasped in her dry throat.

Suddenly she was more afraid than she'd every been in her life.

"Martha... Annie..." Fear propelled her to her feet. It carried her two steps before she collapsed.

"Ow..."

Her body felt like one giant bruise. Somehow, she managed to get upright again, and started climbing out of the crater. It seemed to take forever, while the suns beat down on her head, and her heart screamed in terror for the people she loved.

How far did the devastation extend?

When Sand finally made it to the top of the crater, she saw that it was worse than she'd ever dreamed. From up here in the mountains, she had a perfect view.

A giant furrow ran from where she crouched, petrified with terror... down the mountain... and out into the badlands, as straight as a string, as far as she could see. The edges were churned up into a ridge on either side, and the rocks were scorched black. Some of them had actually split open.

The furrow ran straight through the place where the town had stood.

Nothing was left. Nothing at all.

Sand couldn't breathe. She knelt on the crater rim, gasping for air. Finally she got a breath and screamed, "Martha! Annie!"

She screamed their names over and over. The echoes died in the rocks around her, swallowed by the great emptiness of the noon sky.

She only stopped screaming when her throat was too hoarse to manage more than a faint, breathy whisper. Then she crouched in misery, and listened.

Nothing.

No engine sounds. No voices.

All gone.

She... had killed them all...

"I'm not what they said I was," Sand whispered. "I'm worse. So much worse."

She collapsed in the rubble on the edge of the crater, curling into a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees.

 _Sand?_

Nothing. No response.

 _Sand! Wasn't that fine? See how strong you are? Would you like to do it again, Sand?_

But for once, Sand didn't hear the Voice. She was far beyond anyplace it could reach her.


	4. Alex

Alex Daniels sauntered out of One-Eyed Jack's into the scorching noontime sun of March City, trying to look as if leaving was his idea.

"...and take your damn cat with you!"

"It's not _my_ damn cat," he muttered, staring wrathfully over his shoulder at the black stray. All he'd wanted was a quiet drink, goddammit. Somehow the cat had slunk into the bar.... okay, so maybe he was slipping it a few pieces of his sandwich, because the thing did have the most wistful eyes... but he still thought Jack was overreacting just a little...

"And don't come back until you can pay off your tab, freeloading bum!"

Well, maybe that had a little to do with it, too.

"This is all your fault," Alex muttered, directing a half-hearted kick at the cat.

"Mya..."

It jumped up onto a hitching post and regarded him from world-weary green eyes.

Man, there sure are a lot of black cats in this world, Alex thought, staring at it. He'd passed through a lot of towns, and there seemed to be black cats in all of them. Maybe the seed ships had been full of frozen cats or something.

He laughed aloud at the idea of banks of frozen cats, awaiting the lifegiving warmth of the new world to thaw them, but his laughter died at the thought that out of all the people on this world, only a handful would have any idea what he was talking about.

It was a lonely way to live.

Damn, you're morbid today, Alex told himself, slouching along with his hands jammed deep in the pockets of his jacket. His fingers wrapped around a half-empty pack of cigarettes and he shook one out into his hand, stared at it thoughtfully for a moment before lighting it.

He couldn't help thinking, briefly, of the only person he'd ever known who had the ability to make him laugh when he was feeling like this ... but he clamped down hard on those thoughts, as he had learned to do over the years, clenching the cigarette between his teeth.

 _Don't think about it and the pain goes away_.

Only it doesn't really, it never does... but at least he'd finally got on with his life, if a succession of field-hand jobs and one-night stands could be considered getting on with his life.

Now he'd been fired from yet another job -- for not showing up to work, of course -- and had nothing to do but hang around town until his money ran out and all the locals started hating him.

How the hell did he ever screw up his life this badly?

Alex raised his eyes from the sun-baked street to the curve of the city's Plant, just showing above the buildings. A blue energy corona flickered above it, sometime flaring up into the sky, sometimes guttering sullenly like a dying gas flame. It had been like that for days, sometimes worse and sometimes better. But not normal, Alex thought. Even the damn Plant is depressed ... or whatever they get.

"Let's face it," Alex said aloud, staring up at the suns until his eyes teared. "There's only one thing in life that I'm good at, and I'm never doing that again, ever. So dump on me all you like. I made a promise and I intend to keep it."

"Here," a voice said, and Alex felt something cold brush his hand.

"What the hell?" He blinked sunspots out of his eyes.

The girl who had spoken looked about fourteen. Maybe a little older... tough to say. She was ragged and filthy beyond belief. From the look of the fading bruises on her face, somebody had slapped her around a little, too.

She had just pressed a doubledollar into his hand.

"Go get something to eat," the girl said, in an oddly vacant voice, and turned and started to walk away.

"Hey!" Alex yelled after her. "Hey! Hey, you, I'm talking to you!"

The girl paused, and turned around. "Yes?"

"What's this all about?" Alex demanded, waving the coin at her.

"My... aunts... always said I should give to those less fortunate than myself," the girl said quietly. "So I do."

Alex stared at her ragged clothes and scrawny wrists in disbelief before he exploded, "You think _I'm_ less fortunate than _you_?"

She just stared at him, and Alex realized what she must see: a guy in a beat-up leather jacket, with a scruffy beard and black hair down to the middle of his back, talking to himself. Check that: ranting at her. No wonder she looked freaked out.

"Well, all right," he admitted. "Maybe I do look kind of like a bum."

"That's because you are a bum," one of the local women commented, walking by.

"Mya..." agreed the cat -- or a similar-looking cat, at any rate -- trailing behind her.

"Nobody asked you," Alex muttered.

He looked up to see that the girl was smiling, and her eyes, no longer vacant, were fixed on him. That smile melted his heart in an instant; it reminded him so much of --

 _Don't think about it._

As he gazed at her, the smile faltered, and fell from her face. Her eyes grew wide and haunted.

"What is it?" he asked her, hoping to recapture that enchanting smile.

"What one of us sees, we all see," the girl whispered.

"Huh?"

"I'm sorry," she said, recovering herself. "I thought for a minute I'd seen you before. I must be wrong. I haven't met too many people." She cleared her throat and fidgeted with her ragged clothes. "Look... I -- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you. There's so much I don't understand... I'll just leave now." She spun and started to walk away.

"Wait -- wait!" Alex called. "Hey -- miss!"

"Is he bothering you, ma'am?" Jack called from the door of his bar. "He's been drinkin', you know."

"I'm not bothering her! Trust me! Tell him!"

"He's not bothering me," the girl said obediently. Once again, she looked glazed, as if she stared past the world into ... something else.

"Hey," Alex said. "Kiddo. I'm Alex. Alex Daniels."

"I'm ... Sand."

"That's an unusual name."

She shrugged, looking past his head. "It's my name, that's all. I -- I should be going."

Alex raised his hand, with the doubledollar between his fingers. "Buy you lunch?"

In reality, the girl called Sand wound up buying _him_ lunch, since a doubledollar doesn't go nearly as far as it once did. (Alex used the one she'd given him to buy another pack of cigarettes.) She didn't seem to mind; in fact, she seemed happy to have the company. She'd been traveling alone, she said, as she blithely counted coins onto the table for the bill.

"Christ! Put that away! Don't count your money in public like that, kid!"

"Why not?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Well... people see it and get ideas. They'll try to rob or hurt you for it, understand?"

She shuddered, and looked down at the table. The bag disappeared quickly under her tattered cloak. "Yes... I understand."

Yeah, she probably does, Alex thought, seeing the yellowish stains of the bruises fading on her wrists and cheekbones. I wonder what sort of hell she's running from.

He stared off into the ether, trying to concentrate on anything but the girl. Listened to the other patrons of the restaurant complain about their miserable lives. A group of middle-aged women were giggling like schoolgirls about somebody's bedroom scandal. Two men at the table next to them were talking about the notorious outlaw, the Fire Engineer, and how he'd been seen in the area lately.

Finally Alex said (cursing himself for a nosy bastard)...

"Where did you get that kind of money, anyway? You seem a bit innocent to be a thief."

She gave him a quick stare. "It's my aunts' money. They... gave it to me. For a trip."

That girl was a really terrible liar. Either that, or a good enough liar to fake being a terrible one -- he'd met people like that, seem like the world's biggest suckers until they rob you blind -- but he would put money on this kid being the innocent she appeared.

He knew from personal experience how the world treated innocents.

No, no, no, he told himself. You do not need to protect this kid, understand? She can probably take care of herself just fine. Probably got six-shooters under that cape and knows how to use 'em. Besides, how are you going to protect her, genius, when you not only don't own a gun but wouldn't be able to fire it if you did?

Dammit. Sometimes I hate myself.

"So," he said. "Where are you headed?"


	5. Haunted

It couldn't be, Meryl Stryfe thought as she stepped off the bus. It just couldn't be.

She hadn't been able to believe it when she'd read the preliminary report. Phrases flashed through her mind: _utterly destroyed... hundreds homeless... miraculously unharmed..._

She wouldn't even have known about it if one of her co-workers hadn't been complaining around the water cooler about being sent off into the middle of nowhere. They call the place God's Butthole for crying out loud, he'd said, then blushed and apologized when he noticed Meryl standing there.

She couldn't explain to him that he didn't have to apologize for a bit of crude language; she'd heard much worse, _seen_ much worse, during her field days. But those days were forever behind her. She had a desk job now. Just to be polite and show there were no hard feelings, however, she asked him to tell her about his latest assignment.

And he'd told her...

 _Utterly destroyed... miraculously unharmed..._

The destruction was, for once, not attributed to Vash the Stampede. Vash had supposedly died six years ago. Rumors of Vash sightings continued to abound, usually in wildly conflicting locations, but Meryl knew that they were mostly hysteria. Vash no longer wore the red coat. He was just a man now, and deserved to live in peace like any other man.

But if he'd done _this_...

Meryl's fists had clenched, crushing the paper cup of water. Now it was her turn to apologize before stumbling off to find a towel. While she dried herself, she pondered. Could it really be Vash? She almost didn't think so. For one thing, though the loss of life was much lower than would be expected for such a disaster, a few people had died, including the two old women whose wealthy relatives were filing the insurance claim. That was not characteristic of Vash at all.

But... Meryl reminded herself that people did sometimes die in Vash-related incidents, though usually -- she had to admit -- through no fault of his own. And if he was being hunted again... if some new pack of bounty hunters was on his tail, or Legato had somehow returned, or (God forbid) Knives had awakened...

Then Vash might need her.

To haul his scrawny ass out of trouble before he cost the company a mint and got her fired.

Yeah, that's it.

And before she knew it, she was using her newfound clout within the company to get herself sent to the last place in the world that anybody in their right mind would want to be.

And here she was...

And darn it, it did look like Augusta, after... after...

She couldn't imagine anything other than Vash that could have done this kind of damage.

"You sure you want out here, lady?" the bus driver asked her, looking around at the rubble. Nothing moved anywhere. All the residents of the town -- the survivors -- had moved on to stay with friends or relatives in other parts of this country.

"I can take care of myself, thanks," Meryl said as she paid him.

"Heeeyyyy..." The man squinted at her closely. "Don't I know you?"

"Do you?" Meryl squinted back at him. Unshaven, small, scruffy. Looked just like any other unshaven scruffy little guy to her.

"Yeah! I'll be damned! You're one of those folks I picked up off the sand steamer, back, oh, musta been seven or eight years ago now."

"You remember that?" Meryl asked, amazed. Come to think of it, he did look a little bit familiar...

"Sure I do! Never forget a face, especially as nice a face as yours." While Meryl was trying to figure out whether to get huffy or accept the compliment, he went on, "Besides, that was one trip I'll never forget. That was the time I went out of my way to pick that damn priest -- gave him a deal on the fare and everything -- practically got fried by killer robots for my trouble. And I heard later that Vash the Stampede was seen around that area, too. Man, I'm glad things have calmed down since then." He looked around at the debris. "You don't suppose Vash the Stampede is behind this, do you?"

"Of course not," Meryl said. "He's dead."

"That's what I heard. I dunno, though. Always seemed like a tough guy to kill, that one."

"How do you know?" Meryl demanded. "You never even met him." _That you know of..._

The bus driver shook his head. "Never met him, sister, but I've known guys like that. They don't just curl up and die. Why, if I was that Vash the Stampede, and I got tired of everyone knowing my name and trying to collect the bounty... I'd just start a rumor that I was dead, change the way I look a little bit... Hell, nobody really knows what he looks like anyway, all he'd have to do is ditch some of the really obvious stuff that everyone knows about, like the coat and the Mohawk, and he'd be a free man. Until his violent and antisocial nature started showing up again, of course."

"Don't you have a schedule to keep?" Meryl demanded.

He shrugged, glanced back at the completely empty bus. "I suppose so. Not like there's going to be anyone to pick up, though. Last person I picked up here was some little blond kid that survived the trouble. Poor kid was a mess... looked like she'd been surviving by herself in the mountains ever since the accident."

"I wonder if she was a witness?" Meryl mused, and then, realizing how that must sound: "I mean, I hope she's okay. Poor girl, she must have had a horrible experience. Where did you take her?"

"She got off in March City. That's as far as I go. Couldn't tell ya from there."

"Thanks anyway."

The bus driver gave her a jaunty salute. "Well, I'll be back through tomorrow, if you're ready to leave. Better be here or it'll be another week before I come this way again. And you're totally on your own, besides that."

"I know," Meryl said. "I'll be here." After a moment, she added, "Be careful." _Now why did I say that?_

The bus driver grinned. "Sister, trust me, if there's even a chance that Vash the Stampede is in the neighborhood, I'm keeping my gun close at hand."

"That's not what I meant by being careful!" Meryl shouted after the retreating bus.

Idiot.

She wasn't sure if she was more irritated at the bus driver or herself.

Meryl stood staring after the bus until only the dust cloud remained, shimmering in the desert heat. Then she sighed and looked around. One direction looked much the same as another to her -- jumbled rocks and freshly exposed earth every way she turned. Some kind of disaster had definitely happened here, but from the look of things so far, it could easily be natural: an avalanche, perhaps.

Or a typhoon.

She chose a direction at random and started off into the rubble, dragging her pink suitcase. Her cape bumped against her hips with the unaccustomed weight of the guns harnessed beneath it. Putting on the derringers again, Meryl had found, was much like wearing a skirt for the first time. At first it was incredibly uncomfortable and self-conscious, but it got easier until she no longer noticed it anymore.

It felt good to be back in pants for the first time in months, and it felt good, she found, to be wearing her guns.

She walked for a time before she realized that she didn't know where she was. She knew the town should be right here, but she couldn't even find it. This wasn't as bad as Augusta, it was much, much worse. The main problem, Meryl supposed, was that it was so much smaller. Augusta and July had been cities. This place was just a little village, and there hadn't been any buildings big enough to remain standing against the force of -- whatever had leveled it. So maybe whatever had done this had just been some kind of explosives. Yeah, that's it. Big, high-powered explosives.

Nothing to do at all with Va--

\--Vash--

\--the Stam--

\--pede...

Meryl had just clambered up a massive pile of rubble, fully expecting to see the village, mostly intact, on the other side.

Instead, she found herself standing in the middle of a giant trench in the ground. The piles of rubble that had been giving her so much trouble were only little piles of stones thrown up by the force of something powerful enough to split open the ground itself. Straight as a string, it ran up into the mountains.

Meryl turned around, not wanting to look, and found that it ran into the desert the other way, once again perfectly straight. She couldn't see how far it went because the heat shimmers obscured it from view. Pretty darn far, though.

What could possibly cause something like this...?

 _A hole... in the moon..._

"No," Meryl gritted, closing her eyes and willing this all to be a dream. Anytime now, she could wake up... "It couldn't be him. He put aside the coat and his guns. He wouldn't... he couldn't..."

Just when I was starting to get over him... that spiky-headed, pea-brained buffoon!

Meryl suddenly wished, with all her heart, that Millie were here. Even if she couldn't offer anything helpful, which was likely, she'd be a convenient target to yell at.

Meryl opened her eyes and kicked a rock off the top of the pile. As it bounced down the rubble, it glinted in the sun.

Huh...

Meryl bent down to look at what she'd been kicking at. And choked.

She'd found the town.

She appeared to be standing on it.

Looking around her, she saw that what she'd taken for rocks and piles of earth were actually bits and pieces of adobe walls... roof tiles... items of household furniture so shattered that it was no longer possible to tell what they had once been, or in some cases, what they had been made out of.

The town looked like it had been picked up by a giant's hand, thoroughly mixed with dirt, and dropped from a great height.

Staring around her in disbelief, Meryl could only wonder: how under the suns did ANYONE survive this?

Overwhelmed, she sat down in the middle of the devastation, opened her suitcase, got out her portable typewriter, cranked a sheet of paper into it and started typing.

 _Preliminary report, Associate Supervisor Meryl Stryfe reporting..._

It was funny, but typing reports seemed to be the only thing that calmed her down when she was about to have a coronary. A cup of coffee would have been nice too, but she didn't feel like making a fire to boil water and it was obvious she wasn't going to be able to stop into a nice roadside cafe.

She reported on her trip so far in as much detail as she felt was fair -- after all, she hadn't really _done_ anything yet -- and finally cranked the page out of the typewriter, looked up and nearly had a heart attack all over again.

Vash.

Standing right at the bottom of her pile of rubble, with his back to her, wrapped in a ragged cloak....

Meryl sat stock-still, her heart battering her ribs. It was him. She'd know him anywhere... that rangy frame, that shaggy blond hair ... he'd let it grow out a little, she saw... And more than anything else, she wanted to run down the hill, fling her arms around him and never let go.

Of course she wouldn't do that. She couldn't. She was the one who had walked away, after all. She'd be lucky if he was even willing to talk to her. But still... to have a second chance, after all this time... Meryl blinked her eyes rapidly, fighting back tears.

"Vash?" she said, her voice choked.

He stirred, and turned his head, and looked up at her.

Meryl froze.

 _It wasn't Vash._

It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

That face, the features so like Vash's, but without the softness and warmth... eyes like blue ice...

"Oh God," Meryl whispered, staring into those blue, blue eyes. "Knives."


	6. Journeys

"Hey, Vash, look! That sign said we're only eight iles from March City!"

Vash looked her way, after a moment. "Hmm?"

"Never mind," Millie mumbled, and looked down at her lap. For a moment she lost herself in contemplation of Ellie's angelic face, serene in sleep.

They had wasted days wandering about the hills, looking for Knives... sticking close together, afraid to get out of each other's sight. Millie kept Ellie close to her the whole time, afraid to risk her daughter by exposing her to Knives, but much more afraid to leave her alone.

Finally they had to admit that they were getting nowhere. Knives had a whole world in which to hide. He could be anywhere.

Vash had sunk into a deep depression. He barely responded to Millie's ever-more-desperately-cheerful comments, and all he could talk about, it seemed to her, was how the whole cycle of death and destruction had begun all over again and it was all his fault.

Millie didn't think it was anywhere near that dire. Vash had caught Knives once, hadn't he? Couldn't he do it again?

"Yeah, but look how many people died or had their lives destroyed because of my search for Knives," Vash pointed out bitterly. "And I would never have found him at all if Wolfwood hadn't told me where he was... right before dying. I would never want to go through the search for Knives again... never... but now we have to. God help the world."

Being around Vash was really, really depressing these days. Still, Millie didn't want to leave him alone. He was her friend, after all.

They checked the bus schedules and found that two buses had gone through town on the day of Knives' disappearance -- one headed towards September and October City, the other going the other way, toward the part of the road that had become known as the July Bypass.

"He'd go back to July," Vash said, determined.

"How do you know, Mr. Vash?"

"It just suits Knives' demented sense of balance. I'd bet you money. Or your life."

Even Ellie was starting to pick up on Vash's depression and become even more moody and sullen than she already was -- which was saying a lot. Millie just sighed and grinned and tried to keep everybody's spirits up, when what she really wanted to do was kick everybody in the teeth.

Oh, how she wished Meryl were here. Meryl always knew what to do. Of course, half the time what Meryl did just made the situation worse, but at least she did something about it.

On the day they were going to catch the bus for July, Millie got up early and woke Ellie. Ignoring the little girl's whining about not wanting to get out of bed, Millie scrubbed and dressed her, then started off on the walk to the church.

"Mom... Mom, I don't wanna."

"Well, you're going to go say goodbye to your father," Millie retorted.

"Mom, Dad's in Heaven. That's just a stinky old church and it's really, really boring, and I don't care if Dad's dead 'cause he probably deserved it and--"

Ellie was yanked to a halt by her mother's iron-hard fist. Startled into silence, she looked up.

"Ellen Philomela Wolfwood Thompson," Millie snapped. "If I ever -- _ever_ hear you talk that way about your father again, you _will_ feel the backside of my hand. Do we understand each other, young lady?"

Ellie stared at her mother, and finally managed a very tiny, "Yes'm."

"Good. Come on." Millie started marching onwards toward the church. At first the only thought in her head was, Oh, God, I sound just like my mother! Then another little voice started to intercede, saying, Yes, and it works, doesn't it? She actually listened to me.

Inside the church, Millie let her daughter go after extracting a promise that Ellie would stay inside and not go out the door. Then she approached the altar, and hesitantly crossed herself. Millie's ideas on religion -- like those of most people on her melting-pot of a world -- would have confused, offended or just astounded most people on Old Earth. She believed wholeheartedly in a merciful, just, loving God, but she also believed that God had a wife named Hera and had, at one point, turned himself into a bull and stolen the sun from Valhalla... or something like that. She saw no conflict whatsoever between the idea of all souls going to Heaven when they die, and all souls being reborn into new bodies... or incarnating as nature spirits... or simply hanging around as ancestral guides. Millie was generally fervent about observing whatever religious customs she came into contact with, regardless of whether she had any idea what she was doing or why.

Of one thing, however, she was certain -- even more certain than she was about her belief in God. Millie knew beyond a doubt that wherever Wolfwood had gone after death, he was watching her; and she knew that he heard every word she said to him when she kneeled before the altar.

Today, she could find no words in her heart. After finally getting as close to him as she still could, she was going away again, and she might never come back.

For a long time, she just knelt on the stone floor, straining to feel the warmth of his love around her. Try as she might, all she could feel was the first oppressively hot breezes stirring through the open church door.

"Oh, Nicholas," she whispered.

She had never called him Nicholas while he was alive. It had always been Mr. Priest, and then once she felt more comfortable with him, Mr. Wolfwood. Never Nicholas. Not even once.

She regretted that, as she regretted so many other things.

"Nicholas, I think... It's strange, but I think I'm becoming attracted to Mr. Vash, just a little. I mean, I'd never do anything, of course. Not so much that I plan to remain faithful to you for the rest of my life. I mean, we really only had that one night..." She laughed, and her breath caught in her throat. "Even though I really believe you were the only man I ever loved. I know that sounds all silly and corny, and maybe I am just a silly girl for feeling that way. I have no idea how you felt about me. We never said... I love you. Not even once." Another regret, in a very long list. "But when you said how I was such a good healer... I kind of heard you say I love you, even though you didn't really ... Does that make any sense? I just wonder if you ever heard me say I love you back, even though I didn't.

"Oh, Nicholas, Vash is a nice man, a wonderful man, and I really love him, but I wouldn't ever let myself love him... like that. Vash is for my Senpai. I never understood why she just let him go. I mean, after what I'd seen and learned, about holding onto the people you care for because we might only have a little while... No, I never understood why she did that, Nicholas. I think maybe that one thing, more than anything else, more than Ellie or her promotion or anything, was what drove the wedge between Senpai and me. I don't think I could forgive her for that, just like I couldn't ever forgive Knives and Legato for taking your body before... before Mr. Vash came to the church. Isn't it funny how it's the little things that we stay mad at people for? I mean, I'm plenty mad at Knives and Legato for causing your death, but I think it almost would have been... well, not all right, but a little less wrong... if I'd gotten to hold you one last time, and say goodbye."

She lowered her head and caught her breath, fighting tears.

"Mom?"

Millie raised her head and wiped her eyes. "Ellie? Hon? You okay?"

"Mom, that man..."

Millie sprang to her feet, reaching ineffectually for her stungun before remembering that she'd left it at home. "Where? Where?"

"That man. Mr. Vash. He's outside."

"Oh." Millie relaxed, and went to the door. Vash was outside, as Ellie had said, sitting on a boulder. He looked up when she and Ellie approached. For a moment, his eyes lingered on Ellie, looked away from her and then looked back curiously. Then he looked up at Millie.

"I started to come in," he said. "Then I heard you talking, and figured I'd better wait my turn. Don't worry, I didn't listen."

Millie smiled, forcing back the last vestiges of her tears. "It's your turn now. I'm... all done. It's time to leave. If I've forgotten something, I can't come back and say it, not this time." Consciously she echoed her own words to Meryl the last time they'd left this place, all those years ago. Vash hadn't heard that conversation, so he couldn't have known, but he smiled.

"Moving on," he said. "Finally."

"I hope so," Millie said suddenly, fervently. "I've had it with living my life half-expecting a dead man to walk back into it. I can't wear black forever, Vash, not over a ... well, it wasn't a one-night stand, not really, but I have to stop making more out of it than it really deserves. Don't I?"

Vash half-smiled. "I need to go say my own goodbyes, I think."

Millie nodded, and bowed her head. "Ellie? Do you want to say anything to your Daddy before we go?"

Ellie twisted her hands behind her and looked up at the church steeple bisecting the pale sky. "Yeah, I... Daddy, you made my Mom cry. And I hate you for making my Mom cry. I'll never forgive you."

She turned and ran out of the churchyard.

"Ellie!" Millie cried after her. "Ellie--" She turned to Vash, torn between anger at her daughter, and worry for her. "I'd better go get her."

"Millie." To her astonishment, Vash grabbed her hand, and held it -- gently, though, not hard. "She's only a kid, a sad kid who's trying to grow up a little too fast. Don't be too hard on her."

Millie gently but firmly pulled her hand back. "She's my daughter, Mr. Vash. I know you think I'm a ditz, but I can raise my daughter, at least."

Vash opened his mouth, started to say something, then shook his head and said with a little laugh, "If she's anything like her parents, I pity the guy that kid sets her heart on. And envy him."

With that, he got up and walked into the church.

Millie stared after him, then ran down the hill, looking for Ellie. She found her daughter sitting in the middle of the road, crying.

By the time she got Ellie back home, cleaned her up and fed her, most of the morning had slipped away. Millie stuffed a few more items of clothing into her suitcase. Most of her belongings were still at home, stored at her parents' house. Her worldly possessions, and Ellie's, had been compressed to one suitcase apiece.

It was a strangely free way to live... and sad, rootless. All she'd ever wanted was a nice husband and a little house with a white picket fence and a garden, like her sisters all had. She had never planned to become a nomad -- or a single mother.

But I wouldn't trade you for all the picket fences in the world, Millie thought, looking at her daughter playing in the block of sunlight falling through the window.

She'd said her goodbyes to her landlady the previous night. The old woman warned her to be careful traveling out July way... the Bad Lads gang were said to be operating out there. They'd almost dropped out of sight for years, only to reappear recently with a new leader -- a ruthless man called the Fire Engineer -- and an agenda for making trouble.

"I'll be careful," Millie promised. She did not mention that she and Meryl had met the Bad Lads years ago. Her past, like Vash's, was shrouded in secrecy these days.

Another regret.

And so they traveled, the three of them...

They did not find Knives in July -- only the old ruins with sand drifting over them from the desert. Erosion had begun to sculpt the buildings in weird patterns. Vash was even quieter by the time they left and headed on to May City. They did not find Knives in May, either, and as they got on a bus heading towards March, Vash said softly to Millie, "We've really lost him, you know. He could be almost anywhere in the world by now. I've spent ... more time than you would believe, doing this exact thing. Drifting from town to town, looking for clues or rumors. Finding nothing. This aimless wandering isn't the way to do it."

"I don't know any other way to do it," Millie said simply.

Vash sighed. "That's the big problem, isn't it? Neither do I."

"Well, let's look on the positive side," Millie offered hopefully. "At least we haven't destroyed any towns yet!"

The look Vash gave her would have done Knives proud.

He didn't say anything else to her, except for the occasional monosyllable or grunt, on the entire trip to March City. At first Millie thought he was mad at her, but eventually she reassured herself that he was merely depressed again. Oh, it's probably partly my fault, she thought, gazing out the window at the low afternoon suns. But he seems to get depressed whether I'm here or not, so I shouldn't feel too bad...

When they got off the bus in March, Vash seemed to have worked partway through whatever new mental torture he had devised for himself, at least to the point of becoming interested in his surroundings again. Particularly in Ellie. On the walk to their hotel, he kept watching the little girl whenever he appeared to think that Millie was looking elsewhere.

"Are you all right, Mr. Vash?" Millie asked him at last.

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just..." He shook his head, and gave her a tired grin. "You would not believe who your daughter looks like to me. It must be the heat."

He didn't say anything else about it, and they checked into their hotel. Vash had one room, and Millie and Ellie an adjoining one, as usual -- a strange, ghostly echo of the old days when Millie and Meryl had had their double room next to Vash and Wolfwood's.

Meryl... Millie lay awake in the stifling darkness, too hot to sleep, and thought about her Senpai. Where was Meryl right now? What was she doing? Probably in a nice, air-conditioned office... no, it was night, so she was probably safely asleep in bed. Maybe she'd found a boyfriend after all... Millie felt a jealous twinge at that thought, not for herself but for Vash; but she reasoned that if Vash really wanted Senpai, he surely had had ample opportunity to track her down at the Bernardelli offices and tell her how he felt.

Maybe it was all in my head, all along. Maybe there was never anything between Vash and Senpai at all... maybe I just wanted there to be something, because I liked them both so much.

Do I still want there to be something between them?

She turned that question over and over in her head, and couldn't find a satisfactory answer by the time she fell asleep.

It was still dark when Millie woke up. For a moment she couldn't figure out what had awakened her. Then she became aware of pounding at the door.

"What is it?" she called, pulling her dress over her head, right on top of her pajamas. She had no trouble finding her shoes in the dark -- but it wasn't dark; a blue light was streaming through the window.

Millie recognized that kind of light. It was the light that had filled Inepral City as the Plant had gone out of control. The light that had shone above Augusta as the city dissolved into dust...

"Vash!" she screamed, fumbling for Ellie, who was frightened and crying. "Vash, do you see that?"

"I see it!" he shouted through the door. "It's coming from the Plant!"

"I know!" Millie shouted. Finally she got Ellie into her clothes and opened the door. Somewhat to her surprise, Vash was still standing there. "Do you know what's causing it?"

"The Plant's agitated," Vash said, "but I can't tell why."

Millie breathed a single word: "Knives?"

"I don't know. I can't tell."

"Can you ... ask it?" The idea of talking with Plants was still quite bizarre to Millie, but she had some idea that Vash could do it.

"I'm going to. I was waiting for the two of you."

"Us?" Millie said, surprised. "I thought you'd insist that we stay here."

"Do you want to?" Vash asked dryly.

"Actually, if you'd told me to stay, I'd probably yell at you and follow you anyway," Millie admitted.

"Figures. You're getting more like Meryl every day, Stungun Millie. But no... while it bothers the heck out of me to have the two of you come with me to face Knives or God knows what's over there, it bothers me a lot more to leave you here."

"Because of Knives?"

"No," Vash said grimly. "Because if there's an ... accident... the only safe place in this entire city might be right next to me."

Millie didn't have to ask what he meant by an accident. She followed him outside.

The streets were in chaos. Half the town, it seemed, was running toward the Plant (which seemed an utterly ridiculous course of action to Millie, although she realized that she was about to do the same thing), while the other half were, more sensibly, running away. The weird blue light gave the confusion a slow, dreamlike quality.

"Hey, you!" Vash caught the arm of the nearest man. "What's going on here?"

"Vash the Stampede ... the outlaw ... attacking the Plant! Humanoid Typhoon ... we're doomed ... run ... help ..." He fainted.

"Hmmm," Vash said thoughtfully, lowering the man to the ground. "This brings back some memories... It's been a while since this kind of thing happened to me. Frankly, I didn't miss it."

"I don't know why trouble seems to follow you like it does," Millie complained, pulling a protesting Ellie close to her.

"Follow _me_? What are you talking about?" As he spoke, they were working their way closer to the Plant, pushing through the crowds of people. "Nothing like this ever seems to happen to me when you Insurance Girls aren't ... around ..."

He had half turned around, looking behind him.

"Vash? What?"

"Millie..." There was a very strange look in Vash's eyes, a look Millie had never seen before. "Did you see those two people? I just bumped into the girl... and the guy with her... he..."

"Mr. Vash?" Millie peered into his face, ghostly in the blue light. "You're okay, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. I'm sorry, Millie. First the thing with Ellie earlier, now this... Maybe I really am losing my mind, that's --"

"Vash! Shh!" Millie raised her hand urgently. "Do you hear that?"

"I hear a lot of things."

"Someone crying." Actually, it was more like hysterical, screaming sobs.

Vash nodded, his face paling, and the two of them started toward the sound. They didn't have to go far before they came upon the man slumped on the ground, a woman crouched over him, weeping wildly. The crowd around them had cleared out to leave an open area in their immediate vicinity, with the onlookers standing awkwardly, with an air of wanting to do something but having no idea what to do. A thick, scorched smell made Millie couch.

"Millie," Vash said, his voice abrupt, almost rough. "Cover Ellie's face. If you love your daughter, don't let her look at ... that."

"Why? What...?" But she'd already done it. When Vash got serious like that, it meant things were really urgent.

"Hey! Hey, Mom, what's goin' on?"

"Shh. It's okay. Mr. Vash is taking care of things." She had already figured out why he didn't want her to let Ellie see the body. From what little she could see, the man on the ground had been very, very badly burned.

Vash approached the woman and bent over her shoulder. Millie heard him ask her what had happened. She screamed something incoherent at him. He asked again, in the same quiet voice, and this time she gave him some kind of answer. Millie could tell nothing from Vash's stance, but he came back toward her with great strides.

"Millie! We have to get to the Plant now! Stay behind me... okay?" With that, he turned and started to run toward the Plant.

"Mr. Vash! Hey! Wait!" The crowd was thinner here, and she could break into a jog, following him.

Which was when Millie realized that Ellie had wriggled out of her grasp.

"Ellie? Ellie!"

She looked around in terror, then, looking back, found that she'd lost sight of Vash as well.

"Oh... oh..." Millie stood in the middle of the street, trying to come up with words strong enough to express her fear, upset and frustration. "Oh... _fuck!_ "


	7. Fire in the Sky

The eerie light lit up the streets almost as bright as day. "What is that?" Sand breathed.

Alex pointed. "It's coming from the Plant. Who or whatever is attacking the city seems to be going after the Plant. Hell, maybe it _is_ the Plant, who knows."

"Do Plants attack people?" Sand asked, amazed.

They were standing in front of their hotel, irresolute. Over the past two days, Alex had essentially been living on Sand's money. Well, Martha and Annie's money, really, but they had no use for it anymore, and Sand tried to control her guilt about taking from the secret stash behind where the house used to be by contributing to every charity she came across. Such as she had tried to do with Alex.

Alex kept apologizing for sponging off her, but each time she protested that she didn't mind, which was true. She was so desperate for human companionship that she had been about ready to start talking to random people on the street. It seemed that when she stayed around people, the voices stayed out of her head... mostly. Tonight had been different -- restless with nightmares, she'd been almost glad when she woke suddenly with the blue light blazing through her window.

"You'd be surprised at what any creature will do if it's pushed far enough, Sand."

Sand shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, though the night was not cold. "If it's really Vash the Stampede attacking -- why, those poor people!"

Alex chuckled. "You know what, Sand... I happen to believe that most of the rumors you hear about Vash the Stampede are lies."

"Why do you think that? Maybe he is as dangerous as they say."

"No man is as dangerous as they say Vash the Stampede is. Look, let's just say I've had a little practice with rumors and lies myself. Trust me on this one... I think if you push through the crowd there, you'll find that the man they're calling Vash the Stampede is really just a local bully-boy in a red coat. Pretty soon, the authorities will show up and haul him away. Emergency over. Everybody goes back to bed."

"Maybe we should help," Sand said uncertainly.

Alex shook his head and lit a cigarette. "Nothing we can do. Let's let other people handle it."

"But -- someone might get hurt, and there might be something--"

"Look, kid, trust me on this one! Let someone else handle it, okay? That's exactly how people do get hurt -- jumping into things when they don't know what they're doing."

"We won't get hurt." Sand looked him up and down. "You're big. You can fight, can't you?"

"Woah there, filly! What do you mean, I'm big, so I can fight? The two don't exactly go hand-in-hand, you know."

Sand folded her arms and glared at him. "I can tell that you know how to fight 'cause you move like you do."

"Now look -- uh?"

"Back in my village," Sand said, "there were some people who were brawlers, fighting all the time. And some people never fought at all, because they were really bad at it. And other people never fought, but not because they were scared of fighting. Because they were so good at it that everyone else was scared to fight _them_. And then there were the ones who were so good at it that _they_ were afraid to fight, because they knew that if they fought, they'd probably hurt or kill someone. You look like one of those to me."

Alex just stared at her, open-mouthed. Then he shut his mouth with a snap and looked away. "Sorry to break it to you, kid, but you're not nearly the insightful student of human nature that you seem to think you are. I don't fight because I can't stand pain."

"Guys who can't stand pain don't usually have as many scars as you do."

" _What?_ " Alex's head swiveled back towards her. "You've been counting my _scars_? What the _hell_?"

Sand felt a hot blush rising to her face. Oh, I've gone and made another social error, I bet... "Just the visible ones," she mumbled. "But if you've got that many just on your hands and face and neck..."

Alex had opened his mouth to say something else when a shrill scream rent the night.

"I don't care what you say!" Sand yelled. "I'm going to try to help!"

Despite his earlier words, Alex was right on her heels as they pounded through the streets. They found the source of the disturbance readily enough -- the knot of people here was thicker than anywhere else.

Alex collared the nearest individual. "What happened?"

"The sky!" the man gasped. "It just came down from the sky. Joe... he's... I think he's dying..."

"Move aside!" Alex snapped. "Let me through! I might be able to help. I'm a--"

He broke off.

"A what?" a rough-faced woman demanded, clutching a jacket around her that she'd hastily pulled on over her nightgown. Sand recognized her as the woman who'd called Alex a bum when Sand had first met him.

"A medical professional," Alex said, but it didn't seem to have the ring of truth.

What was he going to say? Sand wondered.

The woman moved aside reluctantly, and Alex knelt beside the man on the ground. Peering over Alex's shoulder, Sand almost choked on the horrible smell of burning hair. She could see that the man's hair was melted to his forehead in dark clumps, his clothing stuck to his body in patches. She was selfishly glad she couldn't see the other side of his face.

If Alex was disgusted by the man's condition, he didn't show it. He bent low over the dying man's face, taking the unburned hand in his own. Sand could hear the soft murmur of his voice, but not what he was saying. He moved his free hand over the man's chest in an arcane pattern she did not recognize.

A smile touched the unburned side of the man's face. His one eye closed; Sand could see just enough of the other side of his face to tell that the other eyelid was burned away, the eye beneath miraculously, horribly intact. It stared unseeing at the sky.

"Joe..." another woman wailed, pushing through the assembled onlookers. Alex stood back to let her bend over the body in frantic grief.

Sand followed Alex, who stumbled through the crowd, moving like a sleepwalker. Some people glanced at him, but they took little notice. He had not, after all, helped the dying man; the death had been no less painful, no less swift, for Alex's presence.

"What did he say? Something came from the sky--"

Alex glanced over his shoulder. "Could be lightning from the Plant, if it's overloading and discharging energy. Yet another reason to get as far away as possible. These idiots... there's no reasoning with them."

Sand said nothing else until they were far enough away that she could walk by his side. Then she asked quietly, "That man... what did you say to him?"

Alex looked down at her, his face unreadable. "I gave him last rites."

"Oh." She thought about it. "Don't you... have to have special training to do that?"

A lopsided smile twisted his lips, and he looked away. "A guy picks up a few things along the way, when he travels as much as I do."

She started to ask another question, but then a jolt like electricity shot through her. Sand jumped and whirled around. It had come from someone who'd brushed against her -- she caught one glimpse of a tall guy with shaggy blond hair, and then he and his companion were gone into the crowd.

"What's wrong?" Alex asked.

"Those people... where did they go? I have to find them!" Desperately she started pushing back the way they'd come. When that man had touched her... she didn't know how to describe the feeling. It was something inside her head, a little like the Voice, only not bad and hurtful, but good, warm, loving. It seemed to calm the storm raging inside her. She had to feel it again.

"Sand! Hey, Sand! Slow down!"

"They're gone." Sand's shoulders slumped in despair. "They're gone and they're somewhere in this city and I'll never find them again."

 _You don't need them. You only need me._

Go away, Voice! she told it furiously, and for the time being, it did.

"Hey." Alex rubbed her shoulder awkwardly. "They're in this city, right, whoever they are? We'll find them. Someone you know?"

"Someone I want to know," she whispered, and all the fight drained out of her. "Someone who might be able to help me."

"Hey, look. When all the excitement dies down, I'll help you look for them, okay? We'll look all over this whole damn town if we have to."

Sand looked up at him, and smiled feebly. "Thanks, Alex."

"No problem. I probably won't be able to go back to sleep anyway. Come on, let's get out of the way. We can watch the people go by, and see if any of them are the ones you're looking for."

"They won't be. Those people were going toward the Plant, not away." Helping... as you should be helping, she thought. But she let Alex move her up against a wall, where they could watch the flow of pedestrians.

A sudden brighter flash lit the sky and Sand shivered. On top of fighting to keep the voices out of her head, she was developing a splitting headache. Her whole body vibrated with tension, like a taught-stretched string being plucked. More than anything else, she wanted to walk toward that light, but it terrified her more than anything had ever frightened her before. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw a bright flash behind her eyelids.

Sand wondered what had killed Martha and Annie, and destroyed her village. All she could remember was waking up on the rim of the crater, hurt and bruised and utterly alone. Something deep inside her kept telling her that it had something to do with that light, and if she'd only go to the light, all her questions would be answered.

"Hey? Kid? You don't look so good. You wanna go back inside? It might be safer..."

"No," she whispered. "No. I need to stay out here."

People jostled against them.

"Hey, look," Alex said softly. "That poor little girl's lost her folks. She's terrified."

Sand looked. Across the street from them, a dark-haired child was sitting on the ground, her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering.

"We can't fight whatever's attacking the Plant, but maybe we can help her," Sand offered. She wanted to do something useful, anything, to get her mind off her own confusion and fear.

They crossed the street. As they approached the little girl, she scrambled to her feet and started to back away.

"Hey, hey," Alex said, crouching down to bring himself to her level. "I'm not scary, am I?"

The child stared at his leather jacket and scruffy beard. "Yeah," she said. "You are."

Sand stifled a giggle. She'd had the same reaction when she first met him.

"So where's your parents, kiddo?"

"None of your damn business," the child retorted.

"Man, have you got a mouth on you." Alex dug into a pocket of his jacket. "Hey, look what I've got for you! Want a candy bar, kid? You can stay with us until your mom or whoever comes looking for you."

The child kicked him in the shins and started to run off into the crowd. Alex was faster; he seized her by the back of her shirt.

"Are you nuts? You'll be trampled if you go out there!"

The girl tried to bite him.

"On the other hand," Alex said grimly, "maybe your parents left you here on purpose."

"Oh, that's mean," Sand said. "You're scaring her."

"She doesn't look scared to me," Alex retorted.

The child tried to bite him one more time and burst into tears.

"Well, maybe a little bit."

He sat down against the wall and held the child, who at first tried to resist but then collapsed against him, crying. Sand sat down beside them and petted the girl's hair.

"It's all right," she said. "He looks scary but he's not. We're going to help you. Where's your mom and dad?"

"I don't know," the little girl mumbled through her tears. "I can't find Mom."

"What does she look like? We'll help you find her."

"She looks like ... Mom," the child sniffled.

"Well, what's her name?"

"Mom."

They looked at each other over the top of the little girl's head. Alex jostled her into a more comfortable position on his lap. "What's your name, then?"

"Ellie."

"What a pretty name. It means light, you know."

Sand glanced instinctively at the light blazing over the city.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Ellie," Alex continued. "I'm Alex and this is Sand. We'll just stay with you and keep you company until your Mom comes looking for you."

Ellie rubbed her eyes. "You're not gonna steal me or something?"

"Heck no. We wouldn't do that. You want that candy bar now?"

"It's prob'ly poisoned," Ellie mumbled. "And Mom says candy is bad for my teeth." But she took it.

"I think the correct response when someone gives you something is 'thank you,'" Alex said.

"Thank you," the child muttered through a mouthful of candy.

"You're welcome, Ellie."

"Are you cold?" Sand asked. "Would you like to wear my cloak? I don't need -- I -- ah..."

"Hey? Sand?"

She heard Alex's voice as if coming down a long tunnel, but all she could think about were the voices -- not just the Voice, but many voices, all screaming at her, begging her to help them -- Sand clutched her head. _Go away go away go away --_

"Sand? Are you sick or something?"

Sand ignored him and raised her head as another flash of light filled the sky.

 _It's the Plant. I don't know how, but the Plant is talking to me!_

"Sand?"

 _The Plant... it hurts... My God, it's true, they're alive and they can feel pain and it's hurting..._

"Sand!"

Alex was shaking her. When she looked at him, he recoiled from her. Ellie, cowering under his arm, stared at Sand in wide-eyed terror.

"What's ... wrong?" she managed.

"Uh... I don't know how to tell you this, but your eyes are glowing." Alex had recovered his equilibrium surprisingly quickly, and he put his free hand on her shoulder. Some distant part of Sand's mind was telling her that Alex seemed to be taking this MUCH too well... as if he'd seen it all before ... "Look, we'd better get you inside..."

"No! I -- I don't know how to explain, but it's the Plant -- Alex, it's talking to me! It's hurting--" She gritted her teeth as a wave of weakness and nausea washed over her. "We have to help it!"

"You barely look like you can stand up right now--"

"If we don't help, it'll die!" Sand cried, and climbed to her feet, using the wall for support. She reached deep within herself, into some hidden reserve of strength she didn't know she possessed, and managed to stand independently of the wall. "I don't care if you stay here and hide behind your own cowardice. I'm going to go help."

"Jeez, where do you get off talking to people like that? You don't know the first thing about me, Sand --"

She turned her back on him, still talking, and staggered toward the light. People took one look at her face and moved hastily out of the way.

My eyes... are glowing? Sand raised her hand shakily to her face and realized, to her astonishment and horror, that her eyes were shut. She feel the closed lids, the lashes. But she could still see everything around her as clear as day.

The voices in her head were screaming... screaming...

If this is a nightmare, I just want to wake up...

Another flash, so bright it lit up the sky from horizon to horizon. Sand screamed along with the voices in her head, falling to her knees. The pain was so great she thought she'd die. Then, suddenly, the light and the voices all vanished at once, leaving only a bright smear of colors burned into her retinas. Sand blinked her eyes a few times, touching her face to make sure her eyes were really open.

The cries of fear in the streets turned into murmurs of confusion. Sand raised her head, her night vision slowly returning. Everyone was staring in the direction of the Plant, and not a bit of light shown anywhere, except the comparatively feeble glow of a setting moon.

A hand fell on Sand's shoulder. She gasped.

"You okay?"

"Alex..." She got to her feet, with his help. "Alex... I ... I couldn't help them..."

"Them?"

"The -- the..." She rubbed her hand over her eyes. "Plant. The Plants."

 _None of us is ever alone..._ Not the Voice, but its echo.

"Come here. Sit down."

Ellie, all but forgotten, trailed nervously after the adults. They might be strangers to her, but they were the closest thing she had to something familiar in this strange chaos.

"Sit down. Slow breaths. Slow."

Sand did as he said, and gradually her pounding heart slowed, the tingling in her fingertips eased.

"Feel better?"

She nodded. "A little." Raising her head, she stared up at the dark curve of the Plant, just visible above the buildings of the city. "Alex... I need to go over there. To see what happened."

"It could be dangerous, even now that the fighting's over. You saw that guy... something over there burned him."

"I have to. I'll go alone--"

"No," he sighed. "I'll come with you."

"You don't have to. I didn't mean to ask."

Alex shrugged. "I don't have enough excitement in my life anymore. What can I say."

"Thank you," Sand said quietly.

Alex looked down at the little girl clinging to his hand. "We shouldn't take the kid, though."

"No. You're right."

They both looked around helplessly for a place to put her. Now that the excitement appeared to be over, most people were drifting back to their homes and beds, some disappointed, some relieved.

Alex finally spotted someone he knew -- the rough-faced woman from before. "Flora! Hey!"

"Oh, great," she muttered. "What do you want, Daniels?"

Alex thrust Ellie in front of him; she shivered, trying to cling to him. "My companion and I found this child... I don't know who her parents are. We can't take care of a child, Flora."

Flora gave him a withering look. "I can see that." But her face softened as she knelt in front of the child. "What's your name, honey?"

"None of your business," Ellie snarled, trying to conceal herself behind Alex.

"She's called Ellie," he said, easily dodging the child's efforts to hide. "She's a little... abrasive. But she doesn't seem to be an orphan, or abused. Her folks will probably come looking for her before too long. I know you've got a good heart, Flora, and I've seen you with your kids--"

Flora looked up at Alex, and to Sand's surprise, smiled at him.

"You have a good heart too, I think," she said, "even if you bury it well."

"Quit trying to butter me up and just take care of the kid," Alex muttered. "If you really like me, you can pay off my tab at Jack's..."

"I already did," Sand said.

"What! You little -- I never asked you --"

"I know," Sand said. "I'm sorry. I made another mistake, didn't I..."

Ellie started wailing and clung to Alex's leg. He had to pry her off and hand her over to Flora.

"I ... want ... my Mom!"

"I think you're about to owe me a favor, Alex," Flora said between her teeth. "And we all know how you pay off those... I take back anything nice I ever said about you..."

"I'm really not a bad guy," Alex said to her back. "I'm not! Hey! And pretty good looking too, huh?"

A distant "Hmmph!" and a faint wail from Ellie were his only replies.

Alex waved his hand. "Flora will take good care of that little girl until her folks find her. She acts tough, but underneath it all, she's a marshmallow. I think she's got a crush on me, too."

"Honestly," Sand said. "You're so odd. It's like you listen, but then again you don't! What's up with that?"

She recoiled from the force of his glare. For a moment -- just a moment -- she was really afraid, for the first time since she'd met Alex Daniels, that he was going to hurt her, and she didn't even understand what she could have said to make him so angry. Then the shutters slammed down over his eyes again.

"I thought you wanted to see the Plant," he said, and he started walking.

Sand followed, trying to calm down her pounding heart.

It's Alex, she told herself. Just Alex. He's a nice guy, really.

Yeah... I've known him all of two days. He seems nice, goofy, fun to be around ... but ... there's anger under there. I keep thinking there's this violent side to him...

"Sorry about that," Alex said without turning around.

"It's okay. I didn't mean to insult you..."

"Forget it. Wasn't your fault. This night is making me jumpy."

"Me too," Sand murmured.

The streets were almost deserted now. Sand wanted to cling to Alex's side, but he seemed distant now, lost in his own world; so she walked alone, picking her way down the streets. They passed the place where Alex had held the dying man. All the moons had set but one, and that one shone eerily through the great curve of the Plant's bell, a cold and frosty glow behind the glass.

"Look," Alex whispered.

The moon's light, shining through the Plant's bulb, coldly revealed ragged edges of glass. A fine spiderweb of cracks ran throughout the great bulb, broken here and there by holes and long, jagged breaks.

Shattered. Destroyed.

"This city will die now," Alex murmured, almost to himself. "The land will dry up, the wells will dry up, and dust will move in to reclaim the bodies of the dead..."

Sand shivered, thinking about the tiny nameless village where she'd grown up. When she last saw it, there was nothing left. Nothing.

What force could have done such a thing?

Had the same thing happened here?

A faint, tinkling crash came from somewhere in the darkness ahead of them.

Alex froze. "Hear that?" he whispered.

Sand nodded.

Then they were at the last row of houses. Between the town and the Plant was a great stretch of bare rock. No one had built anything here, in the shadow of that relic of a bygone era.

Alex flattened himself against a wall, and motioned to Sand to do the same. She saw the gesture, understood the urgency... but something drew her to that great bulb, something far more important than her own safety, or his, or the town's. Dazed, she walked out of the shelter of the buildings, into the bulb's hazy moon-shadow. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet.

"Sand!" Alex hissed frantically. She barely heard him. Her whole being was focused on that huge bulb.

Nearer it came... nearer... It towered against the starry sky. Surely man could never have built anything so huge...

Something brushed her cheek and she almost cried out, still slow, still entranced in her dream. She raised her hand to her cheek and felt grit... Taking her fingers away, she held them in front of her face, turned them this way and that, watching the bits of broken glass sparkle in the filtered moonlight.

A tinkling crash off to her left made her jump.

She tilted her head back, staring up at the belly of the glass sphere above her. As she watched, another piece of glass let go and tumbled, flashing in the moonlight. The time it took to fall told her how tall the thing really was. It shattered on the rocks into a million tiny knives.

There's no one up there now, she thought. It's just falling apart.

This is probably a dangerous place to be, for the falling glass if nothing else...

But she didn't feel like moving. She was frozen, gazing at the moon through layers of scaffolding and cracked glass.

"Sand! Jesus!"

A heavy weight, bearing her down... She screamed, as a fine spray of glass dusted her face, hair, cheeks... then stars exploded behind her eyes, and her ears were ringing. She licked her lips and tasted blood.

"Ow..."

"Serves you right, you little idiot," Alex snapped at her. "What were you tryin' to prove? You just about turned yourself into a shish kebab."

He was crouching near her, dividing his attention between glaring at her and glancing upward nervously at the glass still suspended over their heads.

"You coulda been a little gentler," Sand mumbled, spitting out grit and rubbing her arm. Every elbow, knee and shin seemed to have hit some rock or other. Sharp rocks.

"Maybe next time you'll listen to me. Can we get somewhere safer than this? Now?"

They took shelter beneath the central support tower, and watched the glass fall.

"That's so pretty, falling like that in the moonlight," Sand said.

"Pretty. Damn pretty. Everyone is going to die because of it, but it's still pretty."

"Quit making fun of me, you jerk!"

"Shhh. Not so loud. We may not be alone, you know."

They picked their way through the destroyed Plant. Signs of some kind of cataclysm were everywhere: girders bent like rubber bands, computer consoles melted into pools of plastic and silicon, great holes in the roof and walls of the various rooms.

Sand didn't know the layout of the Plant at all, and she had no idea of the names for most of the things she saw, but she knew where she was going. Alex followed her helplessly through rooms where electrical fires still flickered dimly, past collapsed walls and ruined, irreplaceable microcircuitry.

"I don't see any bodies," Alex said quietly. "The place must have been deserted. At most, there would have been a technician or two on duty, and they must have fled when things started going wrong."

"But They couldn't run," Sand whispered.

"The technicians? How do you know that?"

"No... I don't mean the technicians."

She began to climb a catwalk leading up to the very bulb itself.

"Sand... come down. You're a sitting duck up there, and besides, the glass hasn't stopped falling yet."

Sand kept climbing.

"I'm not coming up there! You're on your own, kid."

Alone, then. It was fitting that she should do it alone; so alone, she mounted the metal steps. Each tap of her feet rang out in the night. Alex was right -- anyone nearby would be able to hear her easily, and see her, silhouetted against the moon.

She climbed.

The stairs went up through a series of landings, and finally ended at a small platform nestled against the bulb. There had once been some kind of equipment in the middle of the platform, but it had melted into a pile of slag. Stalactites of melted glass hung to the floor, fragile as spider webs and laced with moonlight.

Whatever had happened, had happened here.

She reached up to touch one of the columns of glass. It was still slightly warm.

 _See what humans do to our kind?_

Go away, Voice. How dare you violate the sanctity of this place.

Sand could tell that she was not quite alone in her head --

 _...our kind are never alone..._

\-- but at least the Voice had backed off.

Sand stood under the bulb in the moonlight, and strained herself as far as she could, trying to recapture that elusive sense of peace, warmth, rightness.

She heard nothing but her own heartbeat, felt nothing but the stinging of the scrapes on her elbows and shins. Then she began to feel ... pain ... wrongness ... a darkness greater than the night that lay upon the world. It terrified her and she drew back into herself, shocked and frightened by her own ability to reach beyond her own senses.

"Where are you?" she asked aloud, tears burning her cheeks. "Who are you? Are you dead too?"

She was afraid to reach out again, so she began to search the platform for a body, though she suspected that any heat great enough to melt metal would leave little trace of human flesh. She found no bodies, but she did find a very interesting gun.

It was unusually large, and gleaming silver. Bits of melted glass adhered to it when she picked it up, but it was not damaged itself. It nestled in her hand with an oddly comfortable weight. She had never held a gun before, and wondered if all guns were this heavy. But the weight didn't oppress her. It was easy to hold. Very easy.

Like the touch of that random stranger's mind on hers, this gun felt... right. But unlike that chance touch, this rightness was right in the same way the Voice was sometimes right -- a rightness that made her doubt her own senses. Someone else's rightness imposed upon her.

Overwhelmed with loneliness, she sat down in the middle of the platform, cradling the gun on her lap like an infant, and began to cry. She wept for herself, and for the unknown others who had died senselessly tonight. For the first time in her life, she cried until tears could no longer express her sorrow, leaving only a dull ache, beyond grief, beyond despair.

She tucked the gun under her cloak and descended the stairs.

Alex Daniels was waiting for her in the shadows at the base of the tower. All she could see of him was the glow of his cigarette. "Anybody up there, kid?"

"No." Sand rubbed self-consciously at her puffy face, aware of him peering at her in concern. "I thought maybe I'd find something up there to explain who I am... _what_ I am... but there's nothing there. If anyone died up there, I couldn't find any bodies."

"Someone died tonight, all right," Alex said. "And not just the guy in the street, poor sap."

Sand looked up at him. His face was shadowed by the moon, but his voice frightened her again. It was the voice of the other Alex, the one she feared.

"How do you know?" she whispered.

"The light, kid. The light is gone."

 _The light_... For an instant she felt a rush of soaring euphoria, surging from memory, and then it was gone and she was listening to Alex Daniels speaking:

"...but they're as alive as you and me. Maybe in a different kind of way, but still alive. I don't understand how it works, but I know they can think and feel. More than that. They're not just an energy source, not just an animal even. They're some kind of person."

"The Plants?"

Alex nodded.

"Why are you telling me this?" Sand whispered.

"Because I know what you are, Sand. I've known since I first met you, but I didn't really want to acknowledge it ... until tonight... I think you know, too."

"I'm..." She could barely speak, but she felt the rightness of the words as she said them, and heard the Voice in her head agreeing with her. "I'm one of them, aren't I? The people in the Plants?"

"I believe you are. That doesn't make it true, but --"

"No. No, you're right. I know it, I -- I feel in every part of me ... my kinship with them. I can't explain it, but I think that's why I came here, to March City. I think I was trying to come home."

"And now it's dead," Alex said softly.

"They. They're dead."

"All of them?" He sounded suddenly afraid.

"No. Not all of them... but maybe more than just the ones here. Something is wrong, Alex."

"I know." He sighed. "I might have known I couldn't stay out of this. My destiny seems to be laid out for me, no matter how I try to fight it. Maybe it's my family's great sin coming back to haunt us. Maybe it's just my own sins."

He turned away from her, retreating into shadow. His long hair whipped in the wind like a fragment of the night.

"Sand, I did a lot of thinking while I waited for you down here. I'm a coward... I hope you never have to find out just how much of a coward I am. I didn't climb up there with you because I was afraid. Not afraid of dying -- that's one event that holds very little fear for me, to tell you the truth -- but because I was afraid of what you'd find up there. I didn't want to see my worst fears come true... knowing that I was partly responsible."

"Responsible? How?"

He shook his head impatiently. "Maybe I'll tell you someday, if I live long enough. Maybe you'll figure it out, or someone else will tell you. In any case, I came to a decision while I waited down here. There's nothing I can do about the cowardice of my past, and I've fallen too far to go back now -- but there's one thing I've been running from since I was seven years old that it's time for me to face. Because there might be someone who can help you, Sand."

"Another Plant?" she asked hopefully.

"No... not yet. I need to take you to see someone. Quite possibly the only person still alive who remembers the old world... who was alive when the first humans left their first home. Someone who has not forgotten what humanity once knew."

"Is there someone like that?"

"One person."

Sand swallowed hard. "I know it's silly, but now that I know a little about myself... I'm afraid to find out more."

"Believe me, it gets a lot worse than that, Sand." He turned back to her and held out his hand. "Coming?"

Alex, turning, hand outstretched...

Another of those weird flashes of memory that wasn't her own. She saw a younger Alex holding out his hand just like that. She wasn't herself, she was someone else... and the hand that clasped Alex's was someone else's hand.

In another life, she knew she had taken this man's hand -- and changed herself forever.

"Coming?" he repeated.

Sand's small fingers settled in his palm, and he gripped them tightly. His own fingers were long, slim, and cool.

"Let's go," she said.


	8. Runaway

"Ellieeeeeeeeee!"

Millie Thompson forged through the milling people in the streets, for the first time in her life thankful that she was big enough to push them out of the way without trouble.

"Ellie! Ellleeeeeee!"

Occasional flashes of light illuminated the town, but Millie had no patience for anything but trying to find her little girl. Panting, crying Ellie's name, she ran down unfamiliar streets. _Oh, Meryl, where are you when I need you..._

Finally she stopped, panting. She didn't know where she was, though the light of the Plant over the city gave her a general idea. She seemed to have come a long way from the downtown district where she and Vash had stayed, with its crowded hotels and questionable businesses with their false fronts jammed one on top of the next. Here, the facades of the buildings were made of glass and polished metals, and no one was so crass as to push and shove their way into the streets to find out what was going on. In fact, no one seemed to be around at all, except some late-night workers engaged in loading something or other from one of the buildings into their steamwagon.

 _Oh, Millie, you really are a ditz,_ she thought, in her scolding mental voice that sometimes sounded like her big sisters, and more often sounded exactly like Meryl. _There's no way Ellie could have gotten out here with her short little legs. You panicked and went running off like a complete idiot..._

Maybe those workers had seen something helpful, or, if they lived in the city, at least knew somewhere she might look herself. "Excuse me?" Millie called, approaching them. "Please, can you help me? I've lost my little girl --"

Several of the workers looked up, and Millie quailed. They really hired _rough_ types in these parts, didn't they? The men were all dressed in black coveralls, practically bursting out of the coarse cloth with their muscles and hulking shoulders.

None of them said anything, and Millie felt a stab of irritation. Just because it was late and they were busy didn't mean that there was no place for good manners...

"Excuse me! I said, can I ask you a question?"

They all looked at each other. Another guy came running out of the business -- Millie saw that the gilt letters over the door said _First Bank of March City_ \-- and skidded to a halt, his arms filled with bags.

"Uh... yeah?" the biggest of them said finally, studying her with disturbing interest. He was a scary looking guy... wide as a barn door, with a mop of shaggy black hair, his face a web of scars and his nose crooked in that broken sort of way.

"I'm looking for my little girl. She's five years old. About this high. Dark h--"

"Ain't seen her." The man turned back to the newcomer and pointed him towards the truck. A much brighter flash from the Plant illuminated the whole town, and he glanced up, but he didn't look afraid -- speculative, perhaps.

Millie decided that she had no intention of thanking these cretins for their dubious help and turned away. She'd only gone a few steps when she stopped in her tracks.

 _They're robbing the bank!_

Millie, you fool...

She looked over her shoulder and saw the one guy, the one who had spoken to her, watching her leave, his eyes flicking occasionally to the light in the sky.

Like the flashes of light from the now-dark tower, Millie felt her brain light up with one of those leaps of insight that sometimes happened to her.

The Plant -- it's just a diversion! I don't know if they caused whatever's happening, but they're definitely using it as a distraction while they steal whatever they're stealing...

I shouldn't do anything... I have to find my daughter...

But someone has to stand up for what's right. How can I raise my little girl in a world where no one will help anyone else?

She whirled around with her stungun in her hands.

"Freeze, all of you! Get your hands up!"

"Now what?" demanded the guy who had spoken to her.

"Freeze! I said freeze!"

He folded his massive arms. "What's your problem, lady?"

"I demand that all of you stop your criminal activities right now! Or I will be forced to take ACK--!"

Pain exploded at the base of her skull. Millie fell to the sand, whimpering softly. She was dimly aware of someone standing above her, and looked up at a shadow against the too-brilliant sky.

"No," Millie whispered. "My daughter..."

"Looks like you got in the wrong place at the wrong time, sister." The shadow leaned over her.

"Hey, Harry! Need you over here!"

"Boss! What about her?"

"Don't kill her. We'll take her as a hostage."

"A hostage? What's that shit?"

"My shit," retorted the voice of their boss. "She could be useful to us."

"She could have a family that'll come after us into the desert. What is this?"

"I said, it's my shit," the voice retorted, and Millie saw, bending over her, the face of the huge scarred guy.

"Millie?" he murmured. "Is that you?"

"...uh?"

"Faint. Right now."

"...uh?"

"Do it. If you don't, they'll beat you until you're really unconscious. So do it, okay? For your kid? You want to see your kid again, don't you?"

"If you hurt my--"

"No, I didn't. Shut up. Faint. Otherwise you'll die and you'll never see your kid again."

"...okay." She closed her eyes and went limp. _When somebody who looks like THAT tells you to do something, you just do it..._

Lying still, with her eyes shut, through the next few minutes, was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Her gun was taken from her and she was subjected to the most humiliating body-search she'd ever imagined. Her body was lifted and carried, with many snickering jokes and complaints, to be thrown onto a pile of something lumpy and rough. Her cheek scraped against it, but she didn't dare open her eyes to find out what it was. Her hands were yanked behind her and bound with scratchy rope, and something was tied across her eyes, and still she didn't move.

 _You want to see your kid again, don't you?_

If they've hurt Ellie, she thought, I'll kill them all -- fighting back the tears that burned her eyes.

She tried to distract herself by thinking about the bandit leader. He'd called her Millie! He knew who she was. But who was he? Someone she and Meryl had met in their travels? Come to think of it... She strained her ears, and could just barely make out his voice giving orders to the others. Yes, she did know that voice. But from where?

She heard him say, to someone: "But what about Tony?"

"Tony's not back. He hasn't checked in. Think he mighta lost it for good this time, Boss?"

"I don't know. We can't wait for him any longer. He's got the floater, though, so he can rendezvous with us outside town. Let's go!"

The lumpy surface under her jolted, and Millie heard the low rumble of some kind of engine. Moving... they were moving ... and she gave in to despair and cried quietly. Ellie... I shouldn't have tried to be a hero like Vash, I just should have kept looking for you... They don't have you, he just heard me ask about you and used me... Oh, please, Ellie, be safe. Please, God, let me see my daughter again...

A rustle and a clink alerted her that she wasn't alone.

"Millie?"

Again that eerily familiar voice.

Millie stayed silent.

"Millie? Are you awake?" He spoke quietly. "We're alone back here."

Millie mumbled something uncharacteristically sarcastic. Her good nature had been strained to the breaking point.

A hand moved against her hair, freed the blindfold. Millie blinked her eyes. It was dark, but not totally dark, due to the blue light shining through the cracks and crevices of the canopy on the steamwagon. The lumpy surface under her... bags, she found, wriggling slightly so that she could see. She could guess what was in them.

She looked up at the hulking figure crouched beside her. He wore nothing but black, and all she could see of him was the pale oval of his face.

"Who are you? How do you know my name? Where is my l--"

"Shhh!" He covered her mouth with his meaty hand. Millie blinked furiously at him over his fingers. "Don't let anyone hear you, understand?"

"Aren't you their boss?" Millie whispered.

"Yeah. I am. But you have no idea what these guys are like. Showing weakness, or, hell, doing anything they don't understand... it's like throwing orphans to sandworms. I have only the most tenuous control over them."

His voice was so familiar, his speech oddly cultured for the leader of a group of outlaws. "Who are you? Do I know you?"

The big guy laughed softly. "Yeah, I guess it's been awhile, huh? These days people call me the Fire Engineer."

The Fire Engineer... she did know that name. She'd heard of him. He was supposed to be the leader of the Bad Lads gang, now that Brilliant Dynamites Neon was dead.

B.D.N. ... she'd never really believed he was dead, but here was living proof.

"So these are the Bad Lads?" she whispered.

"You better believe it, honey."

Millie glared at him. "What happened to all the ... you know? Glowing armor and what-not?"

He laughed. "The first thing I did when I took over was to get rid of that shit, sister. Do you have any idea how stupid it is to have a bunch of bandits that glow in the dark? And I'm sure you noticed ... considering that you and your girlfriend, wearing nothing but your night clothes, overwhelmed two armored men on the sand steamer ... the armor never was that helpful anyway. All it really did was look cool and slow our men down. As far as B.D.N. was concerned, that was a fair trade. I don't think so. We may not look quite as spectacular anymore, but we fight a lot better."

"You -- you must have been on the sand steamer!"

"What makes you say that?"

"There's no other way you could know how Meryl and I disguised ourselves as members of the gang, unless you were there. Were you a member of the gang, then?"

"Yeah," he said. "I was. Don't you remember me, Millie? You and Meryl dressed my wounds when I was hurt saving everybody on the sand steamer..." His scarred face twisted with the memory.

"Uh..."

"Kaite," he supplied impatiently.

Millie's eyes opened wide. "You're -- KAITE?"

"Hmm?" He seemed amused. "Why are you surprised?"

Millie took in the massive body, the arms that could have wrestled a cow to the ground, the face like a truck wreck crossed with an avalanche.

"You grew up," she said weakly.


	9. To Save the Butterfly

"Millie?"

She wasn't beside him or behind him. Frantically Vash scanned the crowd for the woman and the little girl, taking advantage of his height to see over people's heads.

Nothing.

Aargh! Of all the lousy times for Millie to run off on her own! He didn't have time to look for her. The urgency screamed in his head, growing to a shriek, blazing across all his senses...

 _HURTS LONELINESS PAIN DESPAIR STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP_

"I'm coming!" Vash cried aloud, drawing odd looks from the people around him. "Please wait for me!"

He ran through the city, following the instinctive pull drawing him towards the Plant, his own kind. Discharges of energy flared in the night sky. Some of them struck nearby buildings, sending showers of sparks into the air. Vash saw another injured person being dragged into a building. He wanted to stop and make sure they were all right, but he didn't dare. Every minute he delayed, someone else could be hurt, or killed.

This wanton disregard for life... This wasn't how the Plants were! But even as that thought crossed his mind, Vash remembered the Plant in Inepril City. True, Elizabeth had caused that overload ... but then, lost in its own fear and pain, the Plant had been uncaring about the population of the city, willing to kill anyone near it. Only Vash had been able to calm it down.

Maybe he could calm this one down, too.

When he reached the Plant at the edge of town, the entire area was ablaze with blue light. Vash squinted against the brightness. There were no people here... showing some discretion for once, the townspeople had fled the immediate vicinity of the Plant. Thank goodness. Maybe that would reduce the chances of anyone else being hurt. But if the energy discharges could reach so far away... Vash looked up at the blazing sky. The pain and terror shrieking in his head made him want to scream himself.

 _LONELINESS DIFFERENCE SEPARATION NO NO NO NO NOT ONE NOT ONE NOT ONE NOT ONE_

"What do you mean?" Vash cried out, reaching out towards the light. "What's wrong? Tell me, Sister! It's all right! It'll be all right--"

A wave of despair almost knocked him physically to the ground. He had never seen a Plant this upset before.

Forcing himself to stand upright against that gale, he started across the barren rock towards the great glass bell of the Plant. He squinted against whipping wind, blowing sand. Energy discharges struck the ground all around him.

 _ALONE NO NO NO WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG_

"What's the matter?" Vash cried, holding out his hands and stumbling blindly. "What is it? Tell me--"

He reached partial shelter at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the Plant's interface console. Flying rocks and bits of glass buffeted him. At this rate, the Plant was either going to explode or tear itself apart. Vash drew his silver six-shooter, though he wasn't sure what he'd do with it; he felt better having it in his hand. More complete.

"Sister. Listen to me. Cling to me... you can use me as a lifeline to find your way home..."

"Fool."

Vash looked up, stunned. He could just make out a figure on the stairs, silhouetted against the blazing light. But -- all the Plant engineers should be gone -- surely no one could be so stupid to stick around through all this --

"You always were a fool, Vash the Stampede."

The words were barely spoken above a whisper, but he could hear them quite clearly.

No, Vash thought. It can't be...

He knew that voice.

"You've deluded yourself about the nature of the Plants. The very nature of yourself." The slim figure turned; Vash could see, now, its coat whipping in the wind. He couldn't make out the color of that coat against the light in the sky, but he knew that if he could see it, it would be white.

"It can't be. You're dead. I -- I killed you..."

"You can't kill me, Vash the Stampede." The figure began to mount the stairs. "I'm not something you can kill. Don't you know that?"

"Wait!" Vash screamed, running to the bottom of the stairs.

The figure continued to climb, unperturbed. "You continue to persist in your illusions about the nature of life, of death. Haven't you ever wondered why your Angel Arm does nothing but kill, Vash the Stampede? Haven't you ever wondered if you are capable of anything other than killing? Don't you know the answer already?"

The voices in Vash's head rose to a crescendo of terror.

"No!" he cried, scrambling up the stairs. "Le -- Legato! Whatever you're doing, stop it!"

"Me? I'm not doing anything. You are, Vash the Stampede."

Vash reached the top of the stairs. It was so bright up here that he couldn't see a thing, but he was aware of Legato standing across the Plant's interface console from him.

"You -- you caused this somehow..."

"How would I do that, Vash the Stampede?"

For a moment the light faded and Vash caught a glimpse of the man standing across from him. _It wasn't Legato!_ It was someone else -- skinny, with short-cut hair. The coat whipping in the wind wasn't white, but red. And the face wasn't Legato's...

At the sight of the blood-red coat, Vash almost panicked -- but it wasn't Knives' face, either.

But... he had answered to Legato's name...

Something hovered behind him -- a great disk covered with mechanical lumps and protuberances, weird in the flickering light. It had no wheels, no visible means of support; it just floated at waist height. One of his hands was resting on it.

"How can you be here?" Vash yelled across the distance between them.

Legato, or whoever he was, turned his back, not answering.

"What did you do to this Plant, Legato?"

"I told you. I didn't do anything. You did."

"I don't understand!" Vash screamed.

"You don't have to. You know what, Vash? You are nothing to me anymore. I have another mission to do for Him. For myself, personally, I feel no enmity towards you -- I never have, except as He told me to feel. You are nothing but dirt. You don't matter in the new scheme of things."

"What new scheme of things?" Vash tried to run towards Legato, and found that his legs wouldn't move.

 _Damn him! He's never used his mind control on me before... I always thought that was because he was afraid of Knives... or because he wasn't strong enough to affect me ... What does this mean?_

Legato, or whoever he was, looked back at Vash one final time.

"Two words for you, Vash the Stampede. Alex Saverem."

The bottom dropped out of Vash's world.

 _The person I loved died back on Earth..._ Rem had said.

 _What was his name?_

Alex...

"Alex Saverem?"

Legato laughed, and shrugged and turned away, leaping lightly in a flare of coattails onto the floating thing.V ash recognized it then -- a flyer, of the sort used back on Earth. But there shouldn't be any on this world...

 _He's leaving!_

Vash wrenched at the force holding him in place. It felt as if he was swimming in plaster. Then, all in an instant, all resistance vanished... and something brushed his mind like a butterfly's wing, like a soft broom sweeping away dust... and the screaming of the Plant faded into the background, and he could think again...

 _Help us, single one..._ the new voice in his brain pleaded.

There was no time to think, to plan. He made his decision in a split second, knowing that all his long life he would let someone down no matter what he did.

I'm sorry, Millie. I hope you and Ellie will be all right without me. But if I let Legato go... I know someone else will die, and I cannot allow that....

Forgive me, Plant Sister. I can't help you. I can't help everyone...

Alex Saverem...

Perhaps I have been given a second chance...

He leaped. The silver six-shooter went flying and clattered to the platform beneath him. Vash couldn't spare a moment to even care. One outflung hand caught a strut on the undercarriage of the strange flying machine.

Then the Plant exploded.

Blue light filled Vash's world, along with a rush of loneliness and agony that made him scream aloud ... but his voice was lost in a world filled with noise... Wind tore at him and all he could do was hold on until the flying vehicle straightened out.

Vash blinked. The world was dark except for the light of the moons in the sky. Below him, far below, he could see unfolding desert.

Oh, sister... I'm so, so sorry... Vash closed his eyes, tears trickling down his cheeks. He shifted his grip on the undercarriage of the machine, and for just a moment the crazy thought crossed his mind ... of letting go, and not having to carry all this sorrow anymore...

No, he had to hold on. He'd abandoned Millie and left the Plant to die alone in order to follow Legato (or the person who now bore Legato's name) to his destination. In order to find out who Alex Saverem was. In order to find Knives, and possibly prevent a greater disaster than the one that had just occurred.

"Killing the spider to save the butterfly, Vash. That's what you just did. The lesser of two evils is still evil."

Vash gasped.

"Come on up. I know you're under there. You made the right decision, Vash, the one I hoped you'd make... just another step closer to a glorious new age. We may as well enjoy the rest of our ride in comfort, and I'll tell you about Alex Saverem. Don't you want to know?"


	10. Fragile Flesh

Beyond the rocky crags on the distant horizon, blue light pulsed, flaring against the sky in irregular bursts. Meryl Stryfe lay awake and watched it, unable to sleep.

I wonder what that could be, Meryl thought; and she wondered, too, if Vash were somehow involved.

Somewhere in this world, she thought, there's got to be some bizarre phenomenon that that man's not involved in. But I have yet to see it.

She rolled over on her elbow and looked across the embers of the dying fire at her traveling companion -- a companion she hadn't wanted, the last person in the world Meryl would ever have expected to find sharing the heat of her lonely campfire under the stars. He was curled on himself, and sometimes a small whimper escaped him. All she could see was a tangle of blond hair.

He reminded her so much of Vash, even now. And when she had seen him from the top of the rubble heap... she had felt that clutch at her heart only once before, when she'd first seen Vash walking back toward her after his fight with Knives at Demetery. Relief and joy so great it was almost pain...

Then to have him turn around and see those expressionless blue eyes looking at her, out of a face that should have been Vash's... it was like a nightmare she couldn't wake up from...

As her hands had gone for the derringers, Meryl had heard a click behind her.

She stopped with her hands under her cape.

"Get those hands out where I can see 'em, sister," said the high-pitched girl's voice behind her.

Meryl raised her hands, slowly, very slowly. "You don't know what you're doing," she said, never taking her eyes off Knives, who stared back at her without moving. "That man over there... I know it sounds melodramatic, but I'm not kidding you -- he is the greatest threat to humanity in the world. He wants to--"

"Shut up! All of you people believe the rumors and lies. All you know is the legend, not the man. No one knows the real Vash but me."

"Vash?" Meryl repeated, astounded. "You idiot! You think this guy is Vash the Stampede?"

"Get your hands back up! Yes, I know he's supposed to be dead. It's only a lie spread by his enemies."

"Listen to me... whoever you are," Meryl said, holding her hands as high above her head as she could. _No telling what kind of trigger-happy moron is behind me... How do I get myself into these things...?_ "I'll be first to agree with you about Vash the Stampede... about him not being all bad, just like you said. But don't you have eyes -- that isn't him! That's not the same man! Can't you see that?"

"What's your name, lady?"

Meryl sighed and launched into the spiel. "I'm with the Bernardelli Insurance Society. My name is Meryl Stryfe and this is my ass--" She stopped herself just in time. _This is my associate Millie Thompson_ , she'd been about to say.

" 'This is my ass'? I can see that, thanks..."

Meryl gritted her teeth. "As I was _trying_ to say when I was _interrupted_ , this is my ass -- my ass -- my _assignment,_ you deluded idiot. I'm investigating this disaster, so just get out of my way so I can do my job."

"Do you know what happened to this town?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out! So get out of my way so I can do my job!"

"Turn around, but slowly. Slowly!"

Meryl did so.

The person behind her was as young as she had sounded. A wide-brimmed hat shaded her freckled face from the sun; her sweat-stained shirt, open almost down to her negligible breasts, revealed a sunburned, protruding collarbone. Her knobby wrists stuck out between the frayed sleeves of the shirt and a pair of leather work gloves gripping a rifle that had to be older than the girl herself.

"I know you," the girl said, her eyes widening.

"What?"

"I know you. I thought that name sounded familiar. Meryl... I was young then, but I'll never forget the people who saved my sister's life."

"I'm sorry," Meryl said. "I don't remember you."

"You don't? I guess I look different now. I was really little. It was on the bus after the sand steamer had its accident. There were these weird metal monsters..."

Meryl's eyes opened wide. "That little girl!"

"You were friends with Vash the Stampede then... him, and his other friend, the one who helped rescue my sister. I don't know why you want to hurt him. If you've been out in this sun too long, we have water and food. I'm Lamia."

Meryl cast a fearful look over her shoulder at Knives. At least she assumed it was Knives. There couldn't be _two_ people in this world who looked like Vash ... could there? He was still just standing there, watching her. How creepy can you get? Meryl thought.

"Look... Lamia. That guy over there. Where did you meet him?"

Lamia smiled. "See? We're getting along better already. I picked him up by the side of the road. He asked for my help... to come here."

Meryl's face darkened. She saw it all clearly now... If Vash could cause such great damage with his Angel Arm, then what sort of evil could Knives do...? "Then he destroyed this town, and everyone in it! Surely you saw him do it..."

A shadow crossed Lamia's face and she raised the gun again. "Look, you've definitely been out in the sun too long. We only got here yesterday, and everything was already like this. Vash would never do such a thing!"

Shows what you know, _sister_ , Meryl thought grimly. The real Vash had destroyed at least two towns this completely... and Knives was worse, far worse...

But getting shot by this trigger-happy little ditz wasn't going to help her find out what was going on around here. Over the past few years, Meryl had finally learned to keep her (literally) hair-trigger temper under control -- most of the time. She'd gotten a well-deserved raise and several commendations by keeping herself cool in the roughest situations. So she put on her brightest, most cheerful sucking-up-to-the-boss smile, and said, "I... apologize if there's been any misunderstandings." Hopefully Lamia would not notice that the word 'apologize' emerged through clenched teeth. "We got off on the wrong foot. I must have mistaken this man for someone else."

"You must have, because Mr. Vash is a good man and wouldn't hurt anyone."

"Oh, yeah, _r_ \--" Meryl choked on her rebellious temper and resumed the smile. "I mean, right, you're absolutely right. What was I thinking?"

She offered them both lunch from her supply of sandwiches. They found a shady place to sit and eat, Knives following Lamia like a puppy when she beckoned.

 _What is going on here...?_

Lamia finally put the gun to one side, but kept a hand near it. Meryl handed her a sandwich, and, more reluctantly, gave Knives one as well. Her skin crawled when his fingers brushed hers. The fingertips were shockingly cold to the touch, as if he wasn't even alive, but a walking cadaver.

"Thank you," he said, the first words he had spoken to her.

 _Knives just ... thanked me?_

Meryl mumbled a polite reply. Sitting this close to him, she had to apply massive willpower to avoid looking at him -- not just out of fear for what he might be doing when she looked away, but also because she saw Vash in every line of his body, and her eyes were drawn back to that, again and again.

She had no idea why it even mattered. Of course she didn't want to see Vash again. Of course not. He was a silly, goofy moron who always left destruction in his wake... well, okay, so it wasn't always his fault, but she certainly didn't want to be around _that_ all day long, it simply wasn't safe ... and the way he went after women, positively disgusting...

Meryl realized to her horror that if she didn't think about something else, she was going to burst into tears. Her desperate gaze found Lamia. The teenager had tilted her hat back on her freckled forehead. She'd finished her sandwich in record time -- so had Knives, Meryl noticed -- and was licking the crumbs off her fingers in a completely unladylike manner.

"You never said what you two are doing here," Meryl said, and winced inwardly as Lamia's face, briefly friendly, closed down again. She hadn't meant to sound so accusing.

"That's right," Lamia said. "You're an insurance agent, aren't you? Your kind are paid to snoop into people's lives."

Meryl bristled. "I do not snoop! I investigate claims to protect the rights of ordinary people ... that's all."

"Is that just what you tell people, or do you really believe that crap?"

Meryl found that one of her hands was reaching under her cape for a derringer and stopped herself. _She's just a mouthy kid._

A mouthy kid who had somehow stumbled onto the single most dangerous person on the planet, and didn't have a clue. It was like watching an infant fumble with a lighter and a stick of dynamite.

Meryl didn't know how Knives had gotten away from Vash. She could only hope and pray that Vash even still lived. Six years ago, she had walked away from the responsibility that she should have shared, and left Vash to carry the burden of his brother alone. Now she saw the consequences of turning her back. God, Vash might be wounded or dead because of her selfishness!

As hard as she'd tried to escape it, somehow Fate had landed that burden right back on top of her. And this time, Meryl thought, choking down a bite of sandwich that seemed to have turned to sand in her mouth -- this time, I won't let anybody down. I won't be selfish and try to go back to my old life. I'll follow this through to the end, no matter what it costs me.

"So," she said. "Where are you headed?"

 

* * *

 

It wasn't easy to convince Lamia to let Meryl come with them. Lamia still seemed to consider her some kind of armed madwoman. _Talk about the pot calling the kettle black..._ Meryl thought darkly. She finally convinced Lamia by asking if she'd rather have Meryl wandering around somewhere nearby, armed, than right at hand where Lamia could keep an eye on her. Lamia relented.

"If you try to take my guns away, though, I'll kill you."

Throughout the argument, Knives merely stood by, watching with those oddly expressionless blue eyes. Meryl had never seen Knives with his eyes open; she'd only seen him after the fight with Vash, when he was unconscious. The blue eyes made him look at once more like Vash, and less.

Eventually Lamia told Meryl that the two of them had come out to the site of the destroyed village at Knives' behest. (She still insisted on calling him Vash, and Meryl gave up protesting; it was a waste of breath.) She'd found him wandering beside the road, alone and starving. He wanted to come here, but he couldn't say why. He didn't seem to know why, Lamia said.

"He's using you! Can't you see that?"

Lamia set her chin in a stubborn slant that Meryl was quickly learning to hate. "If you can't stop insulting Mr. Vash, then we'll just leave you here. Honestly! What did Mr. Vash ever do to you, to make you hate him so much?"

 _Shall I make a list...?_ "This guy, this isn't Vash. He may look a little bit like Vash, but I don't care what he told you--"

"He didn't have to tell me," Lamia snapped. "I know who he is. I will never forget the faces of the men who saved my sister. I will help him as long as he needs help. I owe it to my sister's memory."

"She's dead?" Meryl asked, startled and saddened at the memory of that little girl. For a moment she thought Lamia meant Knives had killed her sister.

"She died in one of the fevers. You probably didn't even hear about them." Lamia's contemptuous gaze raked over Meryl, who suddenly felt very self-conscious of her expensive office clothes. Meryl responded as she usually did when she felt guilty about something -- by glowering -- and Lamia looked away.

After a few minutes she spoke again. "We were going to leave here yesterday, but Mr. Vash wanted to stay. He thought something important might happen here. I don't know if he could have possibly meant _you,_ though."

 _Even saving the world isn't worth dealing with this pain in the butt..._ "So has 'Mr. Vash' decreed that it's time to leave now?" Meryl retorted nastily.

"Yes. He told me this morning that we should go to March City. Something important is going to happen there."

"As important as the something that didn't happen here?"

Lamia glared at her. "Look, the only reason I'm letting you come along is because it's either that or shoot you. I really don't want to shoot you, so don't make me."

"Whatever happened to you to make you such a little bitch?"

"Back at you, sister."

Meryl clenched her teeth. "So... how are you planning to get to March City? Wait for the bus? Or walk?"

"Neither," Lamia said, with a coy smile.

She had a car. It was as beat-up and ancient as the rifle, and to start it she had to crank a makeshift starter consisting mostly of a battery and a screwdriver, but it did start with a rumbling cough. Meryl wondered where a girl as poor as Lamia would get a thing like this. Even an old car like this one cost a fortune.

"Well?" Lamia demanded. "You waiting for a rich sugar daddy to come along and give you a ride, sister? Don't see one coming. How about you?"

Meryl tossed her luggage in the back. Lamia had to duck, or it would have hit her in the head.

"Let's go, _sister,_ " Meryl snapped.

They traveled through the desert for two days, and during this time, Meryl grew more and more confused about Knives. She couldn't imagine anyone who seemed less like a homicidal maniac than this skinny guy with the haunted eyes, who huddled in his cloak while they drove through the miles of rolling sand and rock. He looked, and acted, as if he was starving to death. He didn't complain about it -- he hardly spoke at all, in fact -- but wolfed down any food that they put in front of him. The first evening Meryl spent with them, Lamia was toasting bread over their campfire on a long stick. Knives grabbed it off the stick as soon as she took it away from the fire, like a greedy child.

"No!" Lamia snapped, slapping his hand. Knives recoiled, dropping the bread, looking impossibly Vash-like with his wide, hurt blue eyes.

Meryl froze in the act of lifting her sandwich to her mouth. Her heart turned to ice. _That idiot HIT Knives? We're all going to die now..._

But Knives just said, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry."

Meryl dropped her sandwich.

"How many times have I told you?" Lamia scolded with big-sisterly scorn. "Ask politely when you want something. Don't just grab it."

"I'm sorry, Lamia. May I have some bread, please?"

Meryl could have sworn her eyes were about to pop out of her head and roll across the ground.

 _WHAT did he just say?_

"That's all right. I'm not mad." Lamia picked up the bread, brushed it off and gave it back to him. "You've just gotta be polite to people, okay?"

"I'm trying," Knives said. "There are so many things to remember."

Meryl, blinking rapidly, picked up her sandwich and took a bite without even noticing the sand clinging to it.

 _What the hell kind of game is he playing?_

Over the next couple of days, she watched Knives in disbelief. He seemed fascinated by everything -- rocks, sky, clouds, cactus. When they weren't driving, they had to watch him every minute or he'd wander off to stare at another fascinating bit of scenery, clutching his cloak around himself while his blank blue eyes took in everything around him.

As spellbound as Lamia obviously was, surely she couldn't have failed to notice that Knives behaved rather differently from the Vash she'd met years ago. This man could hardly tie his own shoelaces.

Meryl tried to bring it up casually one day while Knives had wandered off to investigate a rock. "Doesn't he seem a little... odd... to you?"

"He's much better now than he was," Lamia replied brightly. "When I found him wandering along the road, he couldn't even talk. He only seemed to know a few words. He's picked it up again very quickly, don't you think?"

"Ah," Meryl said. But... come to think of it... Knives seemed more fluent now than he'd been just a couple of days ago, when she met him. Could his sentences be a little more complicated, a bit less childlike?

Impossible! No one was that good an actor.

"Something terrible happened to him. I don't know what. He doesn't even remember what it was, the poor man."

"The poor man," Meryl echoed faintly.

 

* * *

 

The bright flashes over the distant horizon flared one final time and then stopped, leaving a colorful stain, the visual equivalent of the ringing in one's ears after an explosion. Meryl blinked her eyes to clear them, and looked back at Knives' side of the campfire -- and froze. He was gone. She hadn't even heard him get up. The man moved so damn quietly.

Meryl got up with a sigh and unwrapped her blanket. She looked up at the slim figure silhouetted against the stars on a small rise above their camp, the rifle across her knees. Lamia hadn't been able to sleep, either.

Lamia looked up at Meryl's movement and reflexively raised the rifle. She lowered it when she recognized Meryl, but not all the way. Lamia still didn't trust her. With good reason, if her goal is protecting Knives, Meryl thought.

"How is Mr. Vash?" Lamia asked.

Meryl glanced behind her at Knives' vacated tangle of blankets and realized that from her vantage point, in the dim light, Lamia couldn't tell that Knives was no longer wrapped in them. "Asleep, I think," she said. "I seem to have a bit of insomnia. I think I'll take a walk. Don't shoot anything without making sure of what you're shooting at, okay?" _Trigger-happy idiot..._

Lamia snorted and went back to watching the now-dark horizon.

Meryl slung her cape around her, feeling the comforting weight of the derringers, and left the camp. She would have liked company, out here in the dark -- anyone but Lamia's company. Whatever Knives had done to the girl's brain, he'd done it thoroughly. Meryl had no doubt that Lamia would be on Knives' side in any conflict that might arise. Heck, that girl could probably watch him gun down Meryl in cold blood and then find some way to rationalize it to herself and make "Vash" come out looking like the good guy.

Meryl wasn't sure why she herself was looking for Knives, except possibly that she felt safer wandering around in the dark than lying by the campfire not knowing where he was or what he was up to. Morbid visions danced in her head -- Knives sneaking up behind Lamia and strangling her, Knives standing over her own sleeping body, holding Lamia's rifle...

Meryl shuddered.

No, if he wanted to kill us, he'd just kill us. He must have something in mind, and he needs us for part of it. Then he'll kill us.

In the meantime, Knives was doing such a good impression of a lost, confused amnesiac that he even had her halfway believing him sometimes. Even knowing what the man was like, what he'd put Vash through.

 _He's good. I'll admit that. He's very good._

 _No, I can't allow myself to be sidetracked. I'm not an ordinary person, I'm an agent of the Bernardelli Insurance Society, and I have a job to do!_

She saw him as a slight movement in the darkness, the flick of a ragged cloak fluttering in the desert wind. He was sitting on top of a rocky outcrop, staring in the direction of the now-vanished flashes of light. He did not seem aware of her. Meryl approached him as quietly as she knew how, her shoes treading softly on the sand. Less than fifty feet separated them now.

Meryl felt the weight of the derringers bumping against her hips. Her hand stole to the butt of one of the guns. Even in the dark, such a shot would be easy for her. And it would all be over -- the fear, the running, the ever-present knowledge that the world was not safe as long as Knives was in it. The burden would be gone from Vash ... if Vash still lived.

And if Vash hated her for killing his brother ... then it would be her sin to bear. It would be worth the cost to herself, if she could free the world of this menace.

Meryl drew her gun.

Forty feet between them. Thirty.

She was close enough now that she could have made the shot with her eyes closed, depending only upon his soft, light breathing to guide her aim.

Surely he had to know she was there. It was some kind of trick, trying to draw her out only to kill her in some horribly slow and painful way. Maybe he was twisting her mind as he had twisted Lamia's. Meryl shuddered, her stomach clenching with the loathing that she felt for this man. She gripped the gun in both hands to stop their trembling.

One shot. One bullet.

Still he didn't move. Several strands of impossibly pale hair brushed his neck, blown by the wind. He sighed, and Meryl stiffened, but he only bowed his head lower to rest on his raised knees.

Meryl recognized, then, the soft halting sounds in his breathing: he was crying.

Faking. He's faking. It's all some kind of trick. It has to be.

This isn't Vash. This is Knives. Knives!

 _Meryl, damn you, this isn't Vash!_

And even if it had been Vash... she still shouldn't have been sitting down next to him, and putting her hand on his shoulder...

"Are you all right?" Meryl asked, cursing herself for a fool.

Knives slowly raised his head and looked at her. His face glistened in the moonlight. "My head hurts."

"I -- uh, I have some aspirin, back at the camp." Actually they were PMS pills, but they worked on headaches too.

He almost smiled. "I don't think it would help, but thank you."

 _It's a trick. It's a trap. Everything you feel right now -- he's making you feel it!_

Damn him...

Meryl rubbed his shoulder in what she halfway hoped was a comforting fashion. She could feel the bones through the skin.

"You don't like me, do you?" Knives said.

"I --" Meryl floundered.

"I don't know why." He looked down at his knees. "I can feel the hate coming from you, and I don't know why. Lamia doesn't feel that way, but the way she does feel, it's ... I don't know what to think of it. She admires me, it's -- I'd almost rather have the hate I feel from you."

Meryl didn't know what to say.

Knives rubbed at his forehead. "I just don't know what to do. The only thing I've ever known... is being confused and hurting ... it's like my brain is being torn apart. I just want it to stop." His eyes filled with tears. "I just want it to stop..."

Meryl wanted to scream at him: Stop it! Stop acting like Vash! Stop looking like Vash! Stop making me think about Vash!

Instead she let him fall against her, his tears soaking her shoulder. "Don't ... now see here, don't..." Meryl stammered, awkwardly trying to pat his back. Finally she gave up and put her arms around him, resting her face in his sweat-damp hair. He smelled warm and dusty -- as she imagined Vash might smell ... Meryl closed her eyes, amazed at the pain and longing that swept across her. She wanted the man in her arms to be Vash... with all her heart, with everything in her, she wanted it.

But he wasn't, no matter what Lamia believed. Vash was gone. Meryl had abandoned him to a responsibility that should have been hers to share, and she would never see him again.

Meryl buried her face in Knives' tousled blond hair, and added her tears to his.


	11. Angie

The sky was lightening towards morning when Legato angled the flying machine towards a massive escarpment of rocks bordering the desert. He banked and brought it in on a broad ledge with a sweeping, panoramic view of the rolling sand. A cave gaped from the cliff face like an open mouth.

"Isn't technology wonderful?" Legato asked, dismounting lightly. "Imagine how long it would have taken to cross that much ground on foot, Vash the Stampede. Even riding in a motorcar. We can do it effortlessly."

In the better light, Vash could see him more clearly. The man who called himself Legato was a little wiry guy with ginger-colored hair streaked with gray, his narrow body almost lost in the depths of the long red coat. The only thing about him that was the same was his eyes -- gold-colored, killer's eyes.

Vash had spent most of the ride as far away from Legato as he could get on the small machine. He'd tried aiming his forearm gun at Legato's head and ordering him to take him back to March City, but Legato just laughed, and Vash could not bear the thought of pulling the trigger. He contemplated jumping, but at their height and speed, even he could probably not survive the fall; and to sacrifice himself now, after all he'd given up to follow Legato, seemed a further betrayal of his friends.

I hope they're all right, Vash thought. If they've come to harm... because of me...

He had tried to distract himself during the interminable ride by staring at Legato's coat. It couldn't be... but it sure looking like... It had to be a mere replica of his old coat. It just had to be. But some of those stains looked awfully familiar... and the way the third buckle was bent, just like on his old coat... It looked a little more beat up, with a few more loose threads and another bullet hole or two, but he would almost have bet money that it was the same coat.

 _Who is this guy and why does he have my coat?_

"Coming?" Legato asked, strolling toward the entrance to the cave.

Vash recoiled at a movement from the darkness within the cave, and reached for his gun, touching only his own hip. _That's right, I dropped it..._ But he was glad, then, that he hadn't had a chance to draw his gun, when a handful of dirty children tumbled out of the cave. They ranged in age from toddlers to near-adolescent, eight- or nine-year-olds. Most of them wore nothing more than rags wrapped around their scrawny torsos -- and even the youngest had the hilts of crude knives protruding from their rags. Some of the older ones wore guns.

The kids squealed happily: "Tony! Tony!" They tumbled into Legato's arms. Vash, astounded and horrified, watched Legato move his hands awkwardly about the children's heads. His hands tensed, ready to move if Legato tried to harm them in any way... but the kids let go themselves, and backed away, nervously.

"Tony? You okay?" one of the bigger ones asked.

"I'm quite all right," Legato said. "Where is -- Ah! Angie!"

The woman thus addressed stepped out into the dawn light. Vash thought at first that she was an old woman, then realized that she couldn't be older than her mid-to-late thirties. She carried an infant in the crook of her arm. Vash watched her stop out of arm's reach of Legato.

"Tony," she said, inclining her head in a coolly polite greeting. "Where are the others?"

"They're coming," he said, and Vash was startled at how his speech patterns seemed to shift. That accent -- where had he heard that odd accent before? Certainly not from Legato. "It's a long trip for them, Angie. As for me ... is there anything to eat around here?"

"Of course. You're hungry."Angie started to turn, then noticed Vash, and stiffened.

Vash smiled at her in what he hoped was a friendly and ingratiating fashion.

"This is my guest," said Legato/Tony, bowing slightly. "Please feed him as well."

Angie nodded without smiling and retreated into the cave, impatiently beckoning the children with her. Vash was looking back at the flying machine. He was fairly familiar with the model ... a pre-crash freeflyer, that was all ... it had had some crude modifications, not too surprising in the many years since the fall, but he thought he could fly it --

"Don't even think about it," Legato's voice said in his head, amused and now completely devoid of that interesting accent. "Unless you want them to die?"

Don't hurt them! Vash thought furiously.

Legato smiled. "Still the same Vash."

He walked casually into the cave.

Vash stared longingly at the freeflyer, then followed him.

They followed Angie and the children through twisting passages, which Vash carefully memorized so that he could find his way back to the exit if he had to. This place was like a subterranean refugee camp. The walls of the tunnels were riddled with caves, some shielded from passing eyes by ragged blankets, others uncovered to expose a pathetic collection of shabby personal effects -- dog-eared novels, lumps of clothing, dolls, bits of rusty machinery. Light was provided by a motley mix of candles, oil lamps, and naked electric bulbs supplied by some unseen power source. This intrigued Vash greatly.

"What is this place?" he asked.

Legato didn't respond, but Angie turned and looked over her shoulder. "How did you come to be here, if you don't know that?"

"I didn't come here by choice," Vash said.

An odd smile crossed Angie's worn, tired face. "This is the home of the Bad Lads, stranger. I suppose you won't be talking about it if you leave."

The Bad Lads? Vash wondered if B.D.N. was still leading the gang. He had no idea how that oddly honorable man might have fallen into an acquaintance with Legato.

The dim, dusty lights of the caverns gave way to slanting shafts of sunshine. They entered a naked crevice in the rocks. Vash could look straight up to the sky overhead, but there seemed to be no way in or out of this place save through the caverns. The floor was flat and sandy, littered with refuse and charcoal from myriad fires.

Angie bowed slightly.

"This is the place we call the Hall, stranger. We eat here, relax, play. Shall I bring you a meal?"

"That would be acceptable, Angie," Legato said.

Vash noticed the woman's slight flinch when Legato spoke. "Thank you, miss," he said quietly. "My name is Vash, by the way."

She raised her head, and her dark eyes flashed, briefly. He realized that she had not volunteered her own name, nor asked his.

She left without speaking.

Vash felt cold despite the early-morning sunshine turning the rocks around him to shades of pale gold. This place felt like death to him.

Some of the children crept out hesitantly into the sunshine, curious about the stranger. Vash watched them creeping like small, filthy animals. He hated seeing children in surroundings like this.

He thought briefly of Ellie.

Legato watched the children with a faint smile on his lips. Vash had half-hoped Legato would order them to leave, but he seemed to like having them around. Vash tried not to consider why Legato might want to have them nearby.

Angie returned bearing a tray with two bowls of soup. Bowing, she set them before Vash and Legato, and laid down silverware rapidly and efficiently. She's used to this, Vash thought.

"Is that all you have?" Legato inquired mildly.

Angie froze. "What -- do you mean, Tony?"

"Nothing sweet?"

Angie frowned at him, started to say something, then said, "I'll check, Tony."

Legato inclined his head politely. "Thank you. Ice cream would be most appreciated."

"I'll -- I'll get some," Angie said, and fled.

Legato began eating delicately. Vash stared at his soup. He should be hungry. He hadn't eaten since the previous night. But fear and apprehension made the idea of food repugnant to him.

Angie came back with two bowls piled high with scoops of ice cream. She set them down in front of the two men, cringing away from Vash as she did from Legato.

"You don't have to fear me," Vash said to her softly. "I won't hurt you."

Angie gave him a flat stare... the look of an animal exhausted beyond fear or pain. "Call me if you need anything else," she said, and retreated into the shadows of the caves, herding the children before her.

"They make excellent ice cream here," Legato said, tucking into his. "You'd better eat it before it melts, Vash the Stampede. I hate to see good food wasted."

 _But wasting life means nothing to you._ Vash managed to choke down a couple bites, reminding himself that keeping Legato happy might be the only chance he had to get Angie and the children out of here.

In spite of his stomach-clenching fear, Vash found his natural curiosity reasserting itself. He studied a spoonful of melting ice cream in the slanting morning sunshine. "How do they make this, out here in the middle of nowhere? They seem to have electricity, but how?"

Legato finished his last bite. "Ah! You should see this, Vash the Stampede. It might amuse you."

He got up from the table and Vash followed him down another corridor. None of the children seemed to be around. Vash hoped that they'd all fled, but he thought of Angie's beaten-dog subservience, and his hopes fell. Legato had the entire place too terrified to resist him. No, check that: he had Angie terrified. The kids seemed to adore him, and Vash wondered how he'd managed to warp their little minds in the time he'd been here.

The path ascended sharply, and finally they emerged into the sun. Vash gasped in spite of himself at the breathtaking view. They stood on top of a mesa in the foothills of the mountains. Around them, the desert spread out in its morning beauty.

Eventually his eyes traveled from the barren valleys to the slope immediately below them. He caught his breath in shock. The slope was blanketed with flat blue and black panels of glass, dazzling in the sun.

Solar panels.

"Photoelectric cells," Vash breathed. "They gather the sun's energy... transmit it to hidden batteries... and that runs the whole facility. Lost technology!"

He looked at Legato. "But how?"

Legato smiled his thin-lipped smile, and spread his arms. The coat caught the wind and fluttered behind him like the wings of a great bird. "You are looking at one of the last survivors of Project Seeds, Vash. Tony Blanchard, captain of Project Seeds Unit 423."

Vash's heart fell straight to his feet.

"That's not possible," he choked. "You -- you're Legato Bluesummers. Damn you, I've seen you do the things Legato can do!"

Legato/Tony continued smiling, maddeningly. "But you killed Legato Bluesummers, Vash. You pulled the trigger and blew his brains out onto the rocks. You watched the blood seep into the sand, knowing that you had betrayed all the ideals of Rem Saverem and that her memory died at the moment that you --"

"Stop it!" Vash screamed. Without conscious direction, his hidden gun had folded out of the mechanical arm, pointing straight at the head of the man who called himself Tony Blanchard. It took all his self-control not to pull the trigger.

Still the quiet, maddening smile. "Are you going to kill me, Vash the Stampede? What do you have to lose? You've already proven that you are nothing more than the killer they all said you were."

Shaking at the violence of his own reaction, Vash lowered the gun. _No... I am not like that ... the world is saved one soul at a time ..._ "I know now what it is to kill, and I will never take another life, no matter what."

"Really? What if I bring the children up here, one by one, and throw them over the edge? Watch their little bodies smashed to bits on the rocks? How many children would you allow to die before you would take action?"

"Don't! Don't you dare hurt them, Legato -- or Tony -- or whoever you are."

Legato/Tony, still smiling, turned his back on Vash and gazed out over the shimmering desert.

"Ah, Vash," he said. "So many secrets locked inside that spiky head of yours. My lord wanted you to suffer... but not to die. Never to die."

"Have you been in contact with my brother?"

Legato smiled at Vash over his shoulder. "Off and on. Now and then. As necessary."

How? Vash wondered. When? He hasn't been out of my sight in six years!

"You said that if I came here with you, you'd answer my questions,," he said. "You said you'd tell me of Alex Saverem. Who is he?"

Legato picked up a rock and tossed it over the edge. They both watched it arc downward, catching the sunshine, falling past the solar panels into the yawning chasm below. Vash did not hear it hit the ground.

"Do you know what they had to do to install those panels?" Legato said. "They built a scaffolding on the face of the rock itself. Men, roped together, lowered themselves carefully. They had the flyer for a bit of help, but for the most part, it was down to human muscle and sinew fighting gravity--"

"That doesn't answer my question--"

"--merely weak human muscle, fighting gravity. I could have lifted the panels into place myself, of course, but that would not have been nearly as entertaining to watch. Every once in a while, an improperly tied knot would slip, or a piece of scaffolding would fall. This was entertaining too. Sometimes when I was bored, the entire project would hit a run of bad luck. It's easy to make knots slip. Easy to make men fall."

Don't let him bait you, Vash thought, clenching his teeth. You already know he's a monster. Don't listen to him.

"And yet they'd still go back down onto the cliff, even after watching two or three of their own men fall to their deaths. It's rather funny, isn't it, Vash? It's like watching rats trying to climb up the sides of a glass case slowly filling with water. You know they're eventually going to drown, but it doesn't stop them from scrabbling at the sides until their claws bleed. Even when it's hopeless and all their fellows have drowned, the survivors still keep trying to climb."

"Human beings aren't rats."

"You think not? Ah, but aren't they funny to watch, from a vantage point like this." Legato waved his red-clad arm to encompass the desert. "I like high places, because looking down reminds me how pathetic and feeble the works of the human race really are."

"You're a human too, you know." _I think._

Legato/Tony grinned his thin-lipped, deaths-head smile. "And so you should look upon me, too, as I look at them. Don't you?"

"All life is precious," Vash said. "And you brought me here to tell me about Alex Saverem. Or is that a name you made up to lure me?"

"No, he exists. I even knew his mother in the old days. She was a friend of my Nadia... my beloved Nadia."

 _Legato had a ... girlfriend? Is that possible?_

On the ships.

 _He can't possibly be that old... can he?_

"His mother was... Rem?" Vash said through stiff, dry lips.

"Indeed. Rem Saverem. I slept while she was awake, though the computer woke me at long intervals to check on the status of my ship. My ship..." His golden eyes flickered suddenly, and his head twitched in a kind of nervous tick. Once, twice, three times. Vash watched in surprise. One of Legato's hands curled into a fist; the other remained flat and untroubled, resting against his leg.

 _This guy is more than weird..._

"My ship," Legato repeated. "My ship. _My_ ship. What was I saying?" The fisted hand flattened out, and brushed away an imaginary wrinkle in his coat.

"Your ship," Vash murmured, staring.

"On my ship. Yes. Alex was also on my ship. Rem's son. He was only a small child then. Of course, he is no longer a child."

He'd have to be ancient, no matter how young he was, Vash thought. And how is it that you're still so young, Legato? Or Tony? Whoever you are?

"And why do you want me along when you go to see him?" But he had a sickening feeling that he knew the reason, and got his answer in Legato's horrid rictus of a smile.

"Why, you'll get to watch him die, of course," he said. "After he tells us all about the Genesis Machine."

"Genesis Machine?" said Vash, thinking that a Genesis Machine sounded like something that could make this whole situation even worse than it had been before... if such a thing was possible.

"Alex built it," Legato said, and laughed. His laugh was even worse than his smile. "This is the legacy of your beloved Rem, Vash the Stampede. I haven't been this amused in years."

He waved a slim hand.

"You are free to wander about," he said. "You know what will happen to them if you attempt to leave. Make yourself at home. Get some sleep if you like. We'll be leaving in a few hours. Oh, and Angie will be coming with us when we go to find Alex Saverem. If you'd like, you can ask her why. The answer might amuse you."

Vash stood, shivering with impotent anger, staring at the slim red-clad back.

 _It would be so easy to push him..._

The voice of the darkness inside himself, the darkness inside every man. And Vash fought it, as he always did. He turned away and went back into the tunnel to find Angie, and hopefully get some answers and figure out a way to get them all out of this alive.

And immediately got lost.

"Aw, _man_..." Vash moaned, as he passed a particular cave mouth for what he was positive had to be the third or fourth time. "Why can't Fate, just once, give me a break? What did I do to deserve this kind of thing? Why am I even here? This entire mountain is going to be destroyed before I leave here, and it'll be blamed on me as usual..."

KLONK.

Vash staggered and crumpled to the ground.

He didn't exactly pass out, but for a few minutes he was too disoriented to be aware of the small rustles and murmurs around him. When he began to come back to himself, he heard a voice whispering:

"Bobby, you dorkface, I think you killed 'im."

"Did not."

"Did so."

"Not."

"So."

"Angie's gonna kill you, doofus."

Vash opened his eyes to see a cluster of dirty faces hanging over him. The children recoiled in shock and terror.

"What do you kids think you're doing? You coulda killed somebody!" Vash raised his hand and groped cautiously at his hair. His fingers encountered warm, sticky wetness. It stung. "I'm bleeding, you little idiots!"

The kids all promptly hid behind the biggest one, who crept forward, gripping a huge knife almost as long as his arm. Woah, Vash thought, still a bit dizzy; I guess these are outlaws' kids, after all...

"You'd better get out and leave us alone," the child snapped.

"I'm not your enemy."

"Get out!"

Vash raised his hands towards the child, who cowered like a trapped dog, holding the knife in front of him in small, shaking hands.

"What do you think you're doing!" a woman's voice cried.

Vash looked past the kids and saw Angie standing in the corridor, holding a broom up like a club.

"Wait," he said. "Wait, ma'am -- I mean, uh, miss. It's not what you think--"

"Don't hurt them," Angie said, her voice hardening. "They're all I have. If you touch the children, I will kill you."

Although her only weapon was the broom, Vash believed her -- or, at least, he believed that she was prepared to die trying.

Then, to his surprise, one small girl piped up, "Miss Angie, he's not tryin' to hurt us."

"Yeah," said another boy. "He got caught in one of the clubhouse traps... is all."

Angie sighed. "I've told you kids not to leave those booby traps around where anyone can walk into them. If one of the outlaws trips one... even their boss can hardly control them."

B.D.N.? Vash thought. Does this mean he's really lost control of his gang? I wonder what that means...

The kids scurried to hide behind her, even the boy with the knife, as she cautiously approached Vash. He stood up, swaying a bit. The thing that had hit him lay by his foot -- a piece of metal, with a rope tied around it. He could see where the rope had been strung low across the tunnel ... where one of his feet could brush it.

He'd truly gotten careless in these past few years, now that he no longer had to hide from bounty hunters and Gung-Ho Guns. He was going to have to hone those old reflexes if he meant to survive Legato...

Not again, Vash thought. Oh, Lord, please not again.

He found himself taking a closer look at the piece of metal, bending down and picking it up. This wasn't just any hunk of iron off an old farm tractor. It was smooth and polished, even under the corrosion of years. Vash turned it over and his heart seemed to stop beating when he saw the faded letters.

JECT SE, it read.

Project Seeds! This is from one of the ships! But how -- how did it get here--?

"Are you all right?"

Vash looked up. Angie had come quite close to him, and though she moved back a trifle when he looked at her, he could see the concern in her face.

"Yeah." He grinned at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way, trying to wipe the blood off his forehead. "It's just a scratch. I've been hurt a lot worse in the past." _Oh, if you only knew..._

"The children didn't mean any harm. Please don't be angry with them."

"They're just high spirited." Vash looked down at the kids. The bigger boy waved the knife at him threateningly. He couldn't be more than seven or eight.

"Here. Come with me to the infirmary and I'll look at that."

Reluctantly, Vash let the piece of metal fall. His hand felt empty as soon as it left his fingers... this last little link to Rem and her world.

 _The Genesis Machine... what does that mean?_

He followed Angie down the corridors. She moved surely and easily through the turns that had confused him. The children trailed behind the two of them.

"Whose children are these?" Vash asked her.

Angie shrugged. "Some are bastards of the outlaws. Their mothers are prostitutes or victims of rape. Others were orphaned in the Bad Lads' raids. They rarely leave an infant to die of exposure in the sun... whatever they may have done to the parents. Many of the younger Bad Lads themselves started out this way. We've created a whole generation that knows nothing but the gang. The Bad Lads are mother and father to these children."

"And they'll grow up to become killers, just like the rest. Doesn't that seem sad to you?"

"It seems like survival to me." Angie threw back a curtain. "Come on in, and sit down."

But Vash was frozen with shock.

When she'd spoken of the infirmary, he'd expected a typical bandit field hospital -- dark and dank like the rest of these tunnels, stinking of rotten blood and other, fouler bodily fluids... opened crates of supplies hulking in the shadows, and the moans of the wounded drifting from the dark corners...

This place could have been lifted straight from the medical bays of the Seeds ships.

Strings of electric bulbs running down the middle of the room lit the small space brightly. Under their glare was a bulky, older-model examining table -- still completely unknown on this world -- with an array of readout panels blinking softly above it. Beyond was another table, covered with a white sheet, with clean and neat trays of instruments beside it, and, to Vash's astonishment, a nondescript black box that could only be a sonic sterilizer. Beyond that were several cots, looking cobbled together from spare bits of metal, but the sheets on them were clean, and each had an IV stand beside it.

"Now I know this all probably looks pretty weird to you," Angie said. "Just sit down here and this won't hurt at all--"

She broke off as the look on his face finally must have dawned on her.

"How...?" Vash breathed. "Where did all this... come from?"

"Tony and Kaite built this place--"

"Kaite?"

"Kaite... the Fire Engineer. Our leader now that B.D.N. is gone."

Vash just stood there, blinking stupidly. This was all too much.

"Now come on, sit down and let me look at your head."

She hadn't answered his question, but he was too stunned to pursue it. He let her lead him to the examining table, and sat without complaining while she ran a medical scanner over his forehead. Like most of the other equipment in the room, it had a Project Seeds label on it.

"It looks like you're a little dehydrated, a little malnourished, but not badly hurt. Here, I can give you some pills that will make your head feel better." She dropped two small white pills into his hand. Vash stared at them. Aspirin! This stuff was like gold on this world. Did she have any idea --?

"How did you learn how to -- operate all this?" he asked, staring around.

She looked away. "You pick up a few things here and there, over the years."

 _There is definitely more to this woman than meets the eye..._

Angie used a little handstitcher to sew up the gash on his scalp much more quickly than a needle and thread could have done. Vash followed the tool with his eyes when she took it away. It looked almost brand new. He didn't think he'd seen this much lost technology in one place in a hundred years, not even on the flying ship six years ago. Most of the things the colonists had brought with them had broken over the years, or had been gutted and converted to other uses in the interests of survival.

Angie noticed him looking at it, and held it out. "It looks strange, but it's actually quite simple. See, this little needle here..."

"...goes in and out faster than a thousand times a second, " Vash said. "I know."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Have you... seen one of these before?"

"Years ago," Vash told her, watching her eyes for reaction. "Many, _many_ years ago."

The handstitcher clattered to the floor.

"You--" Angie whispered. "Have you heard of Project Seeds?"

"I..." Vash caught himself, just in time. _I was there,_ he wanted to say. But the habit of hiding his true nature was too strong. "I have."

Angie turned away, looking around the room wildly. Vash stared at her. She seized an object off one of the shelves -- the first thing that came to mind, it seemed -- and thrust it at him. "Do you know what this is?"

"Yes. It's a laser scalpel."

"Yes! Oh, yes!" Her eyes were bright with excitement, her face animated for the first time since Vash had met her. The tiredness had dropped away, and she looked suddenly young, and beautiful. "Now tell me -- how do you turn it on? I'd think it would be this red button here --" She bent to show him, her hair brushing his shoulder, her wariness of him forgotten in her excitement. "But when I push it nothing happens."

"There's a safety lock." Vash turned it over and showed her. "Slide this over, like that, now -- no, no, point it away from yourself--"

Angie gasped in delight as the green beam stabbed briefly toward the ceiling and then flicked off. "Oh, how wonderful! I thought there might be something like that, but I couldn't figure it out. And -- come here! Have you seen one of these before?"

For the next half-hour she dragged him from one piece of equipment to another, and Vash explained them as best he could remember from Rem's lab. Angie was almost in tears with joy when he showed her how to work all the controls on the diagnoser. "Oh, just think how many lives I can save with this! I wish I'd known how to use it when little Jamie had appendicitis... he barely pulled through. Sometimes I'd give my soul for a case of penicillin."

"Are you a doctor?" Vash asked her.

"No. I'm the closest thing these people have, but I'm totally self-taught. I was only eight when--" Her mouth snapped shut, and the shutters slammed down again on her eyes.

"When you came to this world?"

Angie stared at him.

"You... are you from one of the ships?"

Vash hesitated. In all the time he'd walked this world, only a handful of people had known. Before he could speak, Angie raised her hand, her face hard again.

"No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

She did want to know. He could see it in her eyes. But she also looked scared, and Vash wondered why that knowledge might frighten her.

If Angie had been eight years old when the Seeds ships landed, how in the world could she still be so young?

 _She must wonder that about me, too..._

 _So why doesn't she want to know...?_

"Look, I'm sorry if I've said something wrong..."

Angie shook her head. "No, it's not that. You..." She trailed off, gazing at him. "I don't know what to make of you, Mister... Vash. You seem so genuine. You remind me of... someone I used to know. I haven't spoken to anyone so openly in many years. I--" She looked away. "I need to go check on my son."

"Son?"

Angie smiled at him briefly. "Would you like to come and meet him?"

"Yes. Of course."

She led the way out of the medical bay. "Do you really know what everything in there does?"

"Most of it," Vash said. "Some things I've only seen in books, or heard about."

Angie reached into a pocket. "Maybe you know what this is, then. It's my good-luck charm. I've had it for years. I always wondered what it is, and what it does. I think it's so plain that it's pretty."

She held out her hand. In the palm was a small gray cube with a seam around the center. At the sight of it, Vash sucked in his breath.

 _I thought everything like that was destroyed in the wars following the crash..._

"Throw it away!"

Angie recoiled, startled. "Why? What is it?"

"It's a bomb," Vash said, his heart racing. "Where did you get that? I thought everything like that was used up years ago, and the Plants can't make more."

Angie closed her fingers around it. "I found it. Are you sure it's a bomb? This tiny little thing?"

"Yes! Be careful! They're very stable, but sometimes a shock can set it off."

"But it doesn't have a fuse or anything."

"No. To prime it, they'd twist the two halves -- Angie, _don't!_ Once you do that, it'll go off in a matter of seconds. It's a grenade, but it's got enough power to bring this entire mountain down on top of us."

"Wow," Angie said, suddenly holding the little cube as if it was about to burst into flames.

"Weapons were banned on the ships, but some of the colonists smuggled weapons anyway. After the crash, when everyone should have been working together, there were horrible wars... You don't remember them?"

"I don't remember the years after the crash," Angie said. She closed her hand around the bomb, very gently.

"Angie! Throw that away. Please. Promise me."

Angie looked at him, and her face softened. "I promise. As soon as I find a safe way to do it. How do you make it inert?"

"One end has a little pinhole. If you insert something in there, like a needle, it'll become inert and you can unscrew it. It won't explode as long as the two halves aren't brought into contact with each other."

"All right. As soon as I get a chance, I'll get rid of it. I promise, okay?" She stopped beneath a vertical shaft with a rope ladder hanging from it. The shaft wasn't dark, but lit by light bulbs dangling from a wire strung up its side. Angie tucked the bomb into her pocket and looked up. "Home sweet home. Come on, Vash."

Vash followed her up the rope ladder. He wasn't happy, but he didn't want to force the issue. She didn't know what those bombs could do. She hadn't seen what he'd seen.

About halfway up, Angie climbed off into a cave mouth, pulling back the curtain hanging over the mouth. She unlatched a makeshift-looking gate across the entrance, the sort of thing used to keep small children from wandering.

"Lucas?" she called. "Hi, honey. Mama's home, and she's brought a friend to meet you."

Vash followed her into the cave, having to duck to fit his tall frame through the entrance. It was actually rather homey, with blankets hanging on the walls for decoration, and a small table with a vase in the middle that held a small spray of desert scrub brush.

The child sat on a folded blanket at the back of the cave, one thumb tucked into his mouth and the other arm wrapped around a ragged teddy bear. He seemed a bit older than the other children, maybe ten or eleven from his size. He didn't look up when they came in, but remained with his eyes fixed on the floor.

Vash hesitated.

 _That boy --!_

No. It wasn't possible. It simply was not possible.

What's wrong with me lately? Vash wondered. First Ellie... then those people in March City... I swear I must be losing my mind. He's just a kid who happens to look like -- No. He's just a kid. End of story.

"His name is Lucas," Angie said.

Vash knelt down to bring himself to the boy's level. "Hello, Lucas."

The child stared back, blank-eyed, and sucked his thumb.

"He doesn't understand you," Angie said quietly, stroking the boy's shaggy black hair.

"Is he all right?"

"No."

The boy Lucas began to rock back and forth, clutching his teddy bear, and made a high-pitched whining sound in his throat. Angie rubbed his head rhythmically in slow circles, and he calmed down.

"Daniel did this to him," Angie said grimly. "His father. Before we left."

"His father?"

"He used to beat us both." Angie spoke matter-of-factly -- just making conversation, not saying anything of note. "Daniel would hit me with whatever was handy. Straps, tools, pieces of wood. Lucas was a very bright child, always asking questions. Daniel didn't like that. One day, when Lucas was three years old, Daniel crushed his skull with a wrench. Somehow my son survived. You can still feel the place, here..." Her fingers probed the old wound, hidden by the boy's shaggy hair. Lucas did not look up at her. His eyes stared past Vash, into a world only he could see. A little saliva drooled around the finger in his mouth.

"After that," Angie said quietly, "he didn't ask questions any more."

Vash couldn't speak for the horror choking him. To do that to a child --! He met Lucas's blank eyes with his own.

"May I?" he whispered, reaching out a hand towards the boy. Angie nodded, and Vash stroked Lucas's cheek with his fingers. The boy's skin was very soft. Lucas leaned against Vash's hand like a petted puppy.

"He likes you," Angie said. "Most people he just ignores." She smiled at Vash -- a warm, genuine smile. "I knew it wasn't just my imagination. You do remind me of my Hikari. You don't look like him, but under the skin, you have the same glow that he used to have. Poor Hikari...."

"Who is Hikari?"

"Daniel's nephew. Hikari was just my nickname for him. It means 'light', in a very old language from another world. That's what Lucas means too, by the way -- light."

"Light...."

Angie smiled wistfully. "Hikari was such a sweet child. I was very young then too... just a teenager when I started living with Daniel. I tried to protect Hikari from Daniel, but I was too young and scared."

"What did Daniel do to him?" Vash asked, sick with fear, thinking of Lucas and the wrench.

Angie closed her eyes. "Daniel killed the light. It didn't happen all at once, but oh, I remember... poor child. Poor, poor child. Every day his eyes were more shuttered. There was always that sweetness, but it was hidden, bricked up behind walls of pain. After a while... he wasn't my Hikari anymore. He was just a killer like Daniel."

"There's good in everyone," Vash said. "I've always believed that." Though the words rang hollow to him -- thinking of Legato, the one man he had been unable to defeat peacefully. "If you do see him again, maybe you'll be able to wake the little child buried in the man."

Angie's eyes traveled away from his face. "It's too late now. Hikari's dead. Dead and buried, years ago, along with Daniel. And for all the evil Daniel did to us, I sometimes wonder... if maybe by hurting Lucas, he did the boy a great kindness after all. Lucas will never be a killer. I'll always have my little son, my little light." She petted the boy's hair, lost in her own world of grief.

"But everyone should make their own choices," Vash protested. "No one should be able to make the choice for another, right or wrong."

Angie clenched her hands against Lucas's shaggy head. "It's easy for you to mouth platitudes, Mister Vash! You haven't spent your life watching people you loved die!"

"Haven't I?" Vash asked quietly.

Angie ignored him, her eyes flaming. "You didn't see the hate in a seven-year-old boy's eyes as he gunned down his parents' killers. You haven't watched good men consumed by evil until anything worthwhile in their souls dried up and blew away under the desert sun!"

"I have," Vash said. "More than you could imagine."

She looked at him, and the anger in her eyes faded.

"Yes," she said. "You have. I can see it."

She sat back against the wall, holding Lucas in her arms. The boy sat like a slab of wood, not snuggling against her as a normal child would. Vash could only imagine how that must break a mother's heart.

"There's food in the box under the table," she said suddenly. "Bread and that kind of thing. I noticed you didn't eat anything with Tony earlier. Help yourself if you'd like." She laid her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Lucas went on rocking slowly back and forth.

Vash realized that he was hungry, after all. "I think I would like that. Thank you." He found a loaf of bread in the box and broke off some for himself. "Would you like anyth--"

Angie wasn't listening. She'd fallen asleep.

Vash smiled and sat down cross-legged against the wall. Apparently she'd gotten over her fear of him. And he too found himself feeling at ease in her company. It was almost like being reacquainted with an old friend... though he knew he'd never met her.

And yet... there was Lucas's startling resemblance to Rem... Pure imagination, Vash knew, and he couldn't see any of it in Angie's face... but he couldn't shake the feeling.

Vash laid his head against the wall, and though he didn't intend to, he quickly fell asleep.


	12. Genesis Machine

"Well, this must have been what caused the light last night," Meryl said.

They had arrived in March City that morning, and immediately realized that something was wrong. All the businesses were closed. The few people they met seemed stunned, not meeting their eyes and answering all questions with low mumbles and grunts. Eventually, the three of them found their way to the edge of town, where the ruin of the Plant met their eyes.

Now they were wandering around in the wreckage, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the damage. Knives just sat on a boulder, his thin shoulders hunched as he huddled into his ragged cloak. He looked so wretched that Meryl kept forgetting herself enough to feel sorry for him.

Lamia sat on the running board of her car, eating one of the last of Meryl's sandwiches. She had tried repeatedly to offer food to Knives, but he refused to eat.

"Why don't you see if you can do anything for him," Lamia said to Meryl.

"Me? Why me?" Since the previous night, Meryl had been avoiding Knives, at least to the extent possible in their close quarters.

"Look, I don't know what, but I know something happened with you two--"

"Happened!" Meryl's voice rose to a shriek. Hastily she modulated it. Cool, cool... "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Nothing 'happened' with us. Ha! Don't be absurd--"

"--anyway, I don't know what, but I think that's what's got him so depressed. Maybe if you smooth it over, you'll both feel better. I'm worried about him."

Meryl stared at the girl.

 _She doesn't know. She really has no idea. She didn't see him last night. She's painting all his behavior in terms of -- of typical human reactions._

"Stop being such a big baby," Lamia added. "He only wants to be your friend."

"Me! What? You--! Hmmmph!" Meryl turned her back.

"It wouldn't hurt you to apologize."

"Apologize! What in the world makes you think I did anything to apologize for?"

"You've done nothing but treat him rudely since we met you. He's done nothing to you and all you do is snub him. No wonder he's hurt."

" _What?!_ " All Meryl could do was stare in shock. But then she started thinking about it. _You know... from Lamia's perspective, that is kinda what it looks like. The only thing she's seen of Knives is this lost-scared-victim-of-fate act. Heck, he's good enough he almost fools me half the time, and I know what he's capable of._

Right now all I'm doing is driving Lamia away. Like it or not, in order to get us both out of this alive, I'm going to have to get on her good side.... and that means being nice to Knives.

Meryl shuddered, trying hard not to think of the Knives who had cried on her shoulder last night.

"You know something, Lamia," she said, forcing out the words. "I think... I think I may have been a bit... a bit harsh on Kni-- on Vash after all. I'll take him some food."

"Would you?" The girl's freckled face opened up, and she smiled. "Oh, thank you, Miss Meryl. I hope it helps."

 _I hope he drops dead,_ Meryl thought, but she smiled sweetly. "Would you mind leaving the two of us alone for a few minutes?"

Lamia's smile widened. "Oh, of course. I'll go into town and pick up some supplies."

Meryl watched her drive away, then picked up their last sandwich and resolutely marched over to Knives.

He was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, his head bowed and both palms pressed against his temples. He didn't look up at Meryl's approach. She cleared her throat. "Uh... Knives?"

Knives raised his head slowly. "Why do you always call me that? Isn't my name Vash?"

"Don't you know?" Meryl demanded.

"All I know about myself is what that girl has told me."

"Amnesia," Meryl said, sitting beside him on the sun-warmed rock. "Yeah, right. I don't know much about amnesia, but I'm positive it can't change a person's nature. Deep down, they're still the same person no matter what happens to them."

Knives looked at her quizzically from his too-Vashlike blue eyes. That look of hurt, helpless bewilderment made Meryl suddenly furious, for reasons she was afraid to name.

"So what I'm saying is, you can drop the act. Tell the girl whatever you like, she's probably dumb enough to believe anything. But don't play these games with me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Meryl wanted to hit him. "Look, Knives. When you said last night that I hate you, you're right. I do hate you, and I'm positive you know why. I hate you for the things you've done to Vash, and to me, and to this world. You are an evil man and you deserve to die -- _Don't you dare start crying!_ " she screamed, seeing the moisture swimming in his eyes.

Knives jumped, and shrank away from her. His cringing gave Meryl a sudden, dirty feeling of power. For years she'd thought about Knives -- fearing him, hating him, guiltily wanting him to be dead so that she wouldn't have to feel that way any more. A horrid thrill ran through her. _Lamia's gone. You can hurt him now. You can do whatever you want._

"What do you want from me?" Meryl demanded, leaning toward him. Knives recoiled. "Why do you want to hurt us? We never hurt you! What the _hell_ do you want from us?"

"All I want is to be left alone," Knives whimpered, gripping his head.

"Left alone! So why didn't you leave us alone? You claimed to love Vash and you destroyed everything he held dear! Look. Look, Knives." Meryl held out the sandwich at arm's length, and dropped it to the sand. "Do you know how much I hate you? I want to watch you crawl and get that sandwich. I want to -- I want to step on it and watch you eat it anyway. I want to see you die, Knives!"

Meryl stopped because she'd run out of breath. And as she stared at Knives -- shrinking into a little ball, whimpering, arms wrapped around his head -- she suddenly knew what it was to be feared. To be a bully.

She hated it.

"Oh, stop it," Meryl snapped, and then softened her voice. "Stop it. I'm not going to hurt you. For crying out -- Look." She bent down and picked up the sandwich, brushed the sand off and offered it to him. Knives looked at it as if scorpions were crawling on it. "It's not poisoned or anything. I'm really not going to hurt you."

"I just want all this to stop," he whispered, staring at her with wide eyes. "Hurting. Being confused. Being afraid. If you really want to kill me, then go ahead. I'd rather be dead than feel like this anymore."

"I'm not going to kill you. Just take the sandwich, okay?" Meryl looked away, giving him time to get himself back together. She felt the sandwich lifted lightly from her fingers, and resisted the temptation to look around, although a surge of fear started at her toes and spread through her. _Lamia's gone, you fool -- he could do anything he likes to you right now._

But nothing happened, and when she looked at Knives again, he was holding the sandwich in both hands, staring at it.

"Go ahead, eat it," Meryl said. "If you don't, Lamia'll have my hide. I actually came over here to -- to try to get you to eat. She asked me to."

 _Is that really why I came over here?_

Knives gave a small, slightly hysterical laugh. "If that's what you're trying to do, you -- you have a funny way of doing it."

Meryl found herself starting to smile and choked it back.

 _Come on, is it really that hard being nice to him?_

The sound of the car startled her. _She's back so soon?_

Lamia jolted to a stop in front of the two of them. The back of the car was piled with boxes. Meryl took a look: all the boxes said PROPERTY OF MARCH CITY FOOD BANK.

"There was a delivery truck parked right out front," Lamia said. "No guards or anything. You know how lethargic everyone in town is."

Meryl's mouth opened and closed. "You little thief -- you stole from the _food bank_? In a town that's about to dry up because of the Plant --"

Lamia glared back defiantly. "They're giving it to the needy, right? I figured nobody's needier right now than us."

"Just wait six months, and come back," Meryl gritted, thinking of the dying towns that she and Millie had seen in their search for Vash the Stampede. Fed up with the girl's innocent self-centeredness, she let her eyes travel down to the car. "Hey, where _did_ you get that car, anyway?"

Lamia looked away. "Found it."

"Found it, my butt."

"Listen, Miss Meryl!" Lamia snapped. "Do you know what it's like to be poor? Have you ever been hungry, not knowing where your next meal is coming from? I didn't think so. If you'd ever experienced that, you'd do anything to avoid going back to it. Anything. I haven't hurt anyone, and I won't, but a little bit of stealing is pretty pathetic compared to some of the things I've seen people do."

Meryl avoided Lamia's eyes, angry with herself for feeling guilty. It wasn't her fault her parents hadn't been poor. How silly. She remembered seeing girls like Lamia years ago -- girls her own age, ten or twelve, but working in the factories instead of going to school. Her father had told her that those children's parents were poor because they were lazy, and the kids would grow up just like them...

 _I've seen enough since then to know that that isn't true. I could just as easily have turned out like Lamia -- it's just luck that I had good food and clean clothes when I was growing up. But at the same time, it isn't right for her to blame me for not being misfortunate. That's not my fault at all. Everybody plays the hand they're dealt._

 _Is that something Vash would say, I wonder?_

Vash! Why do I care what he thinks?

"Mister Vash," Lamia said, and Meryl jumped. But Lamia was talking to Knives. "Mister Vash, you don't think I did the wrong thing taking this food, do you? We need to eat."

Knives stared down at the sandwich in his hands. "You shouldn't ask me questions like that. I don't know the answers, Lamia. It just hurts my head to think about it."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She climbed out of the car and stood before him, contrite and solicitous. "Is your head hurting again? Here, you should get out of the sun." She shot Meryl a dirty look. "She didn't say anything to you, did she?"

"No, no, I'm just... very tired, Lamia."

"Why don't you sleep in the backseat. I filled up the gas tank too. We should probably leave town before anybody notices."

 _You're more of a traveling accident than Vash the Stampede, you light-fingered little wench,_ Meryl thought.

Knives let her lay him down in the backseat, clearing a space among the boxes. "But I know which way we have to go now, Lamia. East. Towards the rising sun. We were too late here, not much too late, but enough to matter. We mustn't be too late there."

"Where?" Meryl asked. "Where are we going?"

Lamia glared at her. "Leave him alone."

"I'd kind of like to know where he's getting his information," Meryl retorted.

"He's tired and he doesn't have to answer your stupid questions."

"No, don't yell at her," Knives said. "It's a fair question. I wish I knew the answer, Meryl. It's like voices are speaking inside my head, telling me that I must stop the damage and find something called the..." He hesitated. "The Genesis Machine. It's very important. But they don't agree on what I should do with it. Some say I should destroy it. Others say I should use it. It's very confusing."

"And you don't have to think about it. Just get some rest. Towards the east. Yes. That is the way we will go, then." Lamia settled him down in the backseat, directing occasional glares towards Meryl to make sure she kept her distance.

She needn't have worried; Meryl had no intention of coming any closer to Knives than absolutely necessary.

 _Voices in his head? The Genesis Machine? What is that? I really don't like this..._

But she did know one thing. There was no way she could abandon Lamia and Knives now. Something bad was going to happen. Meryl could feel it in her bones -- maybe this is what Knives means by the feelings he doesn't understand, she thought, stifling a hysterical giggle.

Something bad. She didn't know if she should just shoot Knives now, before he could do whatever he was planning, or if it would be better to stick with them through the desert and find out what the Genesis Machine was.

Meryl had a bad, bad feeling that if she did find out what the Genesis Machine was, she wouldn't want to know.

I wish we'd never taken that assignment all those years ago, she thought, clenching her fists. I wish Janice or Tom or somebody had taken it, and they'd been the ones to meet Vash and they'd be the ones standing here faced with this horrible mess...

"If you're coming, get in," Lamia said. "Or we'll leave you here."

"Coming! I'm coming!" Meryl scrambled for the shotgun seat.

They left the shattered Plant behind, with a frosty silence hanging over the front seat of the car, neither female looking at the other. In the back, Knives was asleep, or at least quiet.

The silence lasted until they were on the road out of town. Then they had to slow down, for the road was choked with refugees fleeing the town. Meryl clasped her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead as Lamia wound the car through throngs of vehicles of all types -- cars, wagons, even carts pulled by hunched men and women in harnesses. Most of the vehicles were piled high with household furniture, clothing and other belongings. The less fortunate were carrying their possessions on their backs, and some of them beat on the car doors, begging for help.

"How can it be this bad already?" Meryl cried aloud. "The Plant only broke down last night!"

But she knew the answer, looking around her. Everyone, no matter their education or social status, knew that Plants were life. Without its Plant, the city would die. These people were probably the smart ones, the ones who anticipated what would happen rather than sticking around to watch their families die slowly in the dust.

"Oh, look," Knives said suddenly from the backseat. Meryl turned her head and saw him peering out of the car. She looked where he was looking. Amid the crowd of people, two girls had knocked down a smaller girl and one was holding her down while the other took off her shoes.

"Why, those--" Meryl's hot blood boiled over. She pushed open the car door and jumped out of the still-moving vehicle, stumbling and falling to her knees. She scrambled to her feet and pushed her way through the crowd. "Hey! Leave her alone, you little brats!"

"Aw, crap..." The ragged girls abandoned the other one, fleeing into the throng, carrying the girl's shoes. Meryl knelt beside the small, huddled figure. The child's body was bleeding and she flopped limply when Meryl turned her over.

"Poor thing." Meryl picked her up and started to rise.

"Is she all right?"

"Wahh!" Meryl almost dropped the child. Knives was standing right behind her.

"Don't do that to me!"

"Sorry," he mumbled, cringing away.

"Oh, stop it. She's unconscious. Those brats were robbing her. I wonder where her parents are?" Meryl looked around, but no one seemed to be searching for a child. She carried the girl's body back to the car.

"Oh, I swear you're more trouble than you're worth," Lamia grumbled, but she looked at the child with concern. Meryl climbed into the backseat, and Knives got into the front. Meryl cradled the girl's body on her knees. "Is she hurt?" Lamia asked.

"It looks like they hit her. One of you make yourself useful and give me a canteen." Meryl used a little of their precious water to rinse the girl's cuts and abrasions. Then she gasped. "I know this girl!"

Lamia looked around. "What?"

"This -- this is --" No. It had to be a mistake. She hadn't seen Ellie Thompson in over two years. Kids changed a lot in that time, didn't they? But that shaggy hair... that pointed little face...

The child woke with a scream. Meryl jumped. So did everyone else in the car.

"It's okay, honey, don't cr-- umpth!" The child kicked Meryl in the stomach and tried to scramble away. Lamia watched the scene in the rear-view mirror, grinning.

"Stop it, you little brat! I'm trying to help you!"

"Lemme alone! You're tryin' to kidnap me an' you better leave me alone or I'll--" The child's face crumbled and she burst into tears. "They took my shoes," she wailed. "An' they said they wanted my dress 'cause it was pretty..."

"Shh. It's okay, honey. They're gone now. You're safe."

Meryl tried to put her arms around the little girl, but the child kicked at her and pushed her away. "I want my Mama," she whimpered.

"Where is your mother, honey?"

"I don't know," the little girl wailed, and burst into fresh tears. Finally Meryl managed to get her into an awkward embrace -- more of a football carry, really. She didn't know how to take care of a kid! Lamia was grinning again and Meryl shot her a look of hate.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh. It's okay, Ellie. Do you remember me? I'm Meryl. Your mom's friend. Do you remember me?"

"Uh-huh," the girl mumbled into Meryl's neck. Meryl's arms stiffened and she had to force herself to relax in order not to scare the child further. It really _was_ Ellie. Here! But how?

"Ellie, where's your mom? Is she in town?"

Ellie wailed an incoherent story through her tears. Meryl could only understand about one word in four, but she managed to get the idea that Ellie hadn't seen her mother since the previous night.

"Lamia! Stop the car! We have to go back!"

"We have to do what?"

"I know it sounds absurd, but this kid's mother is a friend of mine. I don't know what she's doing here, but I have to find her and make sure she's all right."

Lamia shook her head. "We ain't turning around, sister. Got it? I don't care if--"

She broke off as the muzzle of Meryl's derringer pressed against her neck.

"I said we're turning around, _sister_."

Lamia hit the brakes and the car slid to a stop.

"You're such a pain," she sighed, but her eyes kept going to the child huddled in Meryl's arms, and there was sympathy on her hard young face. "An hour, okay? We'll look for an hour. I want to get out of here before dark. There's going to be looting, you know. I don't want to be near this mob and neither do you."

They searched for far more than an hour, and the sun had begun to set when Lamia declared the search over.

"Miss Meryl, it's hopeless. We could wander all over this town and not find your friend. It's too big and there's too much confusion. We have to get going."

"I suppose," Meryl sighed. She looked down at Ellie, who had cried herself to sleep beside Meryl on the seat of the car.

 _Oh, Millie. How can I take your daughter with me into danger? How can I forgive myself for this?_

But she had no options, no friends here, no one to turn to. Meryl sighed, and leaned her head against the window of the car. She was in the backseat, pressed against a wall of boxes. Ellie slept on beside her. In the front seat, Knives stared out the window, his hair red in the bloody light of the setting sun.

Lamia drove out of the town and into the growing night. The road was less crowded, and little campsites had begun to dot the desert as the refugees settled down.

"Those poor people," Meryl murmured, stroking Ellie's hair.

"What's the matter, rich girl? Are you finally worried about the common folk?" But Lamia's voice was subdued.

"It's everyone out there, little girl," Meryl said. "Rich. Poor. It doesn't matter. They're all leaving. This town is dead."

 _Oh Vash. Why can't I shake the feeling that you had something to do with this?_

"Turn here," Knives said.

They jolted off the main road onto a rough track leading out into the night. The sun had set, leaving only a blood-red stain in the sky behind them. Ahead, they saw only stars, and a bluish line where the dark desert met the greater darkness of the sky.

"This way?" Lamia asked.

"Yes. This way."

It was almost morning when they finally stopped to make camp. The sun began to rise as Lamia and Knives curled up in their blankets and fell immediately asleep. Then Ellie woke and complained about being hungry. Meryl, who had dozed in the car, built a fire and made them both breakfast. She let the others rest.

"Where's Mom?" Ellie asked.

"She's not here, but we'll find her soon, I'm sure." Meryl boiled some of their precious water in the coals of the fire to make her morning coffee. Can't have a day without caffeine, she thought, a bit crazily.

Ellie settled down by the fire and started playing with rocks, stacking them into little forts. Meryl got out her typewriter. I'm far overdue for a report, she thought. But when she sat down at the keys, nothing came to her. She tried several times, but each time had to crumple up the paper. She never got further than her name.

I'm traveling in the desert with a serial killer who isn't human, a teenage girl with a crush on him, and my best friend's five-year-old child, looking for something called a Genesis Machine in spite of having no idea what it looks like or what it does -- though I suspect that if my life keeps going the way it has been, this Genesis Machine will turn out to be capable of blowing up the world. How do I explain this?

Ellie crawled onto Meryl's lap. "Hey, I can type," she announced.

"Honey, don't do that." But after pushing the child's insistent fingers away from her keyboard a few times, she gave up. It wasn't as if she was getting any work done in the first place.

"Do you even know what the letters are?"

"'Course I know my letters," Ellie said indignantly. "I'm not a baby. Look, I can type my name."

"That's nice, dear," Meryl said absently, watching the little girl peck out ELLEN PHILOMELA WOLFWOOD THOMPSON. Ouch, she thought. Philomela? For pete's sake, Millie, don't you have any taste at all?

Ellie gave up on typing and laid her head against Meryl's chest. In spite of herself, Meryl felt a soft, warm feeling steal over her at the small round head nestled so trustingly against her. While Ellie still seemed wary of Lamia and (not surprisingly) Knives, she had seized upon Meryl as the only halfway familiar thing in this frighteningly strange world.

"I want my Mom," Ellie sighed.

"I'd like to see her too," Meryl said quietly, rocking the little girl. When Ellie fell asleep, Meryl laid her down by the fire. She wished she could sleep, but insomnia gripped her until Lamia woke and they got underway again.

They spent several days like that, going onward, ever onward. A couple of times they stopped to get gas in the small towns they passed through. Meryl insisted hastily on using some of her money to pay for it, rather than leaving Lamia to her own devices.

"Just where are we going again?" Meryl inquired once, when she and Lamia were alone on an outcrop of rock overlooking their current campsite. The sun was just rising, and the desert was molten gold around them.

Lamia shook her head. She had disassembled her rifle and was cleaning it with a soft rag. "I don't know. I'm sure Vash will know when we get there."

"How can you trust him like this?" Meryl asked, not picking a fight this time, but genuinely curious. "I mean, he's even admitted that he doesn't know where we're going, or why. Yet I think you'd drive him to the ends of the world if he asked you to."

Lamia looked up. "He doesn't have to ask," she said. "He only needs to need me to. I haven't had anyone to need me since my mom and sister died. I believe in him, and everyone needs someone to believe in them."

"I wish I had your faith," Meryl said, turning away to watch the sunrise. _I wish you'd placed that faith in someone more trustworthy than Knives..._

A strange thing was beginning to happen with the dynamics of their little group as they went on, though. They didn't fight as much. When Meryl saw Knives, one morning, making Ellie a little jacket out of part of his cloak, she wasn't as surprised as she felt she should have been.

They had not seen any people in days. The road they were following -- if it could be called that -- had dead-ended in one of the many nameless little towns dotting the desert. Then they were driving through the wilderness, sometimes making good time over sun-baked sand flats, other times easing the car across rough, broken terrain. They had two cans of gas in the back of the car, and when they started using gas from the first can, Meryl felt she should be the voice of reason. "You know, if we don't turn around now, we're not going to have enough gas to get back. And if this car breaks down out here, we're really in trouble."

"We have to get where we're going," Lamia said.

Meryl thought she should protest more. She should draw her gun and force these suicidal idiots to take her back to the last town and leave her there. Even that horrid fate would be better than watching Millie's little girl die of thirst in the desert. But she'd known from the moment she first stepped into this car that she'd thrown her lot in with Lamia and Knives, whatever the outcome. So she sat back on the hot, sticky seat, brushed her sweat-damp hair from her forehead, and stared out the window.

For the last day or so they had been drawing nearer to one of the many mountain ranges that criss-crossed this world. Now they were getting into rougher territory. At the moment they were driving along the sandy bottom of a near-vertical cliff face, towering thousands of feet above them towards the pitiless blue sky. The cliff was clearly ancient, but even many years of incessant wind had been unable to sculpt the hard stone. Here and there, massive chunks of the cliff had let go, collapsing under their own weight, and slid down to rest in giant jumbles at the foot of the cliff.

Following Knives' murmured directions, Lamia drove the car up to one of these, and stopped. The engine died, and the rush of the wind was the only sound they heard. For a few minutes they sat in silence, listening to the wind moaning among the rocks.

"Are we camping already?" Meryl asked.

Lamia shrugged. "I don't know. Knives says we're here."

"Oh, he does, does he," Meryl muttered. She was hot and thirsty and sick of bumping over endless rocks, sick of indulging a madman's fantasies.

They got out of the car. The wind whipped Meryl's short hair around and dried the sweat on her neck. Ellie clung to her leg.

And slowly, slowly, the realization crept over Meryl that the huge rock towering above them was not a rock at all. It was worn and roughened by countless years of wind and sand, but it was not rock.

It was metal.

And it had letters on its side. One word, barely legible anymore, as the incessant wind had scoured most of the paint away.

SEEDS.

"Oh, my gosh..." Meryl breathed.

This is one of the ships Vash spoke of, she thought. One of the ships that brought our ancestors to this world. Out here in the middle of nowhere.

The small group of travelers stood in silence, staring at this ancient relic from a world not their own. And none of them could find words to speak.


	13. Don't Cry For Me, Angelina

Vash woke to sobbing.

He stood in the darkness, and the sounds of crying came from all around him. Slowly the realization crept over him that he wasn't awake -- though he wasn't really dreaming either.

"Who are you?" he called.

A hot wind out of the darkness blew his words back to him, and with them, a feeling of biting condemnation. It made him feel like a small child who had done something wrong.

"Who are you? Why are you angry with me? Why are you sad?"

 _Words! We should need no words to communicate. We are not like the pathetic humans. You are a corruption of all that we are!_

He didn't really hear the voice so much as understand what it was saying to him, as if the meaning was injected directly into his brain.

"What are you?"

 _Stop it! Stop hurting us! This is all happening because of you!_

"I don't understand."

Glimmers around him began to light up the darkness. He was standing on sand, sand stretching away as far as he could see until it was swallowed by the shadows. Lights moved around him like fireflies. He could see them only out of the corners of his eyes; when he tried to look directly at them, they skittered away.

"Tell me what I'm doing wrong! How can I stop hurting you?"

He raised his hands in supplication, and saw that the fingers were glowing -- the fingers of both hands, not just one. Utter horror washed over him. _That light --! No, not again! Not ever again!_ he thought, struggling to choke the glow back down.

 _You are ashamed of who you are!_ the unheard voices condemned him.

"I just want to live without hurting anyone!" he screamed, curling his fingers into fists, fighting back the rising light inside him.

 _You hurt us by your very existence! Let go! Embrace the light!_

"No! When I do that, people die! I won't kill for you!"

 _Humans die! What is that to one such as you?_ Now the voices all sounded like Knives.

"No one has the right to take another's life! No one!"

"You tell 'em, Tongari," said another voice.

Vash whirled. "Wolfwood!"

The priest hunched against the wind, cupping his hand around the cigarette he was lighting. Blood soaked through his shirt and dripped off his elbows, pooling around his feet. He seemed oblivious to it. Looking up, he gave Vash one of his painfully familiar crooked grins. "Don't let anybody tell you how to live your life, Tongari. Nobody makes those choices for you. Your ticket to the future is always blank."

In spite of his pain, Vash couldn't help laughing. "Now you sound like--"

"--Rem?" Wolfwood said. But it wasn't Wolfwood anymore. His -- _her_ \-- black hair whipped like a flag in the wind. The scarlet drops of blood scattered on the wind like the petals of a red flower.

Rem raised a hand towards Vash, with blood pooled in the palm.

"I always knew you two were angels, put among us to show us a brighter light," she said. "I tried to learn from you, how to build a better world, but rather than making myself a better person, all I succeeded in doing was making you human..." Her eyes were terribly sad.

"No, Rem, don't say that. There's no shame in being human. We're not better than you."

"All I wanted was to make a better world for my children." The glittering lights began to swarm about Rem like tiny stars. Her hands, still held out to him, were outlined with living constellations that moved and danced across her pale skin. "My children, Vash... please, protect my children..."

She fell to her knees in the sand, her hair falling down like a curtain across her face. The lights swarmed around her, too bright to look at.

"Rem!" Vash shielded his eyes with one hand and tried to force his way through the light to her. It was too bright, too hot. It formed a shield holding him back.

"My children," Rem cried. She wrapped her arms around herself, seeming impossibly tiny on the sand. No -- she really was smaller. She raised her head and the hair she tossed back wasn't Rem's long straight black hair, but rather Ellie's shaggy mop. Millie's daughter looked back at Vash from tear-filled blue eyes.

"Ellie? What are you doing here?"

"Help me!" Ellie cried in Rem's voice, stretching her arms out towards Vash. He tried to reach her but the light wouldn't let him... just as he'd tried to reach out to Rem, lifetimes ago, watching helplessly as her falling ship blazed in the planet's atmosphere like a supernova...

"Help me!" she screamed. The light flared up around her, more like fire now than stars -- and suddenly Vash was standing in a burning building. Pieces of the ceiling were falling all around him. A boy stood among the flames, burned and bloody and trembling. He clutched a gun in both hands. A woman was there too, reaching out a hand toward the boy. Vash couldn't see her face. The boy whirled towards her, raising the gun, and Vash realized that he knew that boy, he knew it was --

"Help the children," Ellie cried behind him, and now her voice sounded more like a younger version of Wolfwood's.

"I'm trying!" Vash cried, raising his hands to his face to protect it from the smoke and flames. "I'm doing my best. I don't know how to do better."

"Five generations of one family," another voice said softly, a woman's voice. "Five generations inextricably tied to your own life."

The woman in the burning building turned around and Vash could see her face. It was Angie -- a very young, beautiful Angie.

"All tied to you," she said. "You are the key, Vash."

"The key to what?"

"The Genesis Machine," she said.

Vash woke with a cry. He sat up, blinking, trying to orient himself. Stone walls... curtains... he was in Angie's cave, he remembered.

Angie turned around from the table. "Are you all right? It sounded like you were having a bad dream, but I couldn't wake you up."

Vash nodded wordlessly, still haunted by that image of Angie from his dream -- young, beautiful, reaching out to the frightened child Wolfwood --

 _You are the key to the Genesis Machine._

What is the Genesis Machine? he wondered. Only Legato knows for sure. Or Tony, or whoever he is.

Why can't someone just give me a straight answer for once? he wondered, running his hand through his spiky hair.

"Tony came looking for you," Angie said, her eyes flicking furtively around the room with the fear that always seemed to grip her when she came into contact with Tony. "He wants us to come up to the mesa."

"We're leaving already?"

"Leaving?" Angie said.

"He said that we'd be leaving soon." _How long did I sleep?_

"Leaving?" Angie repeated. She shook his head. "I don't know what he told you, but I can't go anywhere until Kaite and the others get back. I can't leave the kids alone."

"The kids! Where are the kids?"

"Around," Angie said. "They had lunch not too long ago. I just checked on the baby and -- what's wrong?"

Vash took a deep breath and forced himself to calm his racing heart. "Listen to me. You can't leave the kids unattended with Le-- with Tony around. There's no telling what he'll do. Are you sure they're all right?"

Angie frowned at him. "Quite sure. What's wrong with you?"

"Angie... how well do you know this guy?"

A shadow passed across her face. "Well enough to know that he's dangerous, and crazy," she said softly. "But he never does anything without a reason. We've been here for years and he's never lifted a hand towards any of the kids. Believe me."

"I'd be more comfortable if we could check on them, make sure they're--"

"What's taking so long down here?"

Tony swung lightly into the cave, the red coat flaring around him. In one hand he carried a white metal case, slightly larger than a briefcase. He smiled at Vash, a thin cold smile -- like a snake might smile, Vash thought, if it had lips.

 _Angie TRUSTS this guy?_ But it wasn't trust, Vash thought, noticing how she cringed whenever Tony came into a room. It was fear, a fear so deep that the idea of going against Tony's wishes was totally alien to her. Vash had seen that kind of thing before -- wives terrified of their husbands, children of their parents. He began to suspect that Tony's hold over Angie was something that went back a long, long time.

Tony set down the metal case -- Angie stared at it as if it was about to explode -- and shrugged his thin arms out of the red coat. Beneath it, he wore a shiny black bodysuit. He tossed the coat to Vash, who caught it, startled.

"Put that on. You'll get chilly up in the wind without it."

Vash wanted to recoil from the geranium-red leather. Instead he ran his hands over it -- here, a bullet hole or scorch mark he recognized; there, a missing button that shouldn't be gone. It was his coat, all right, and Tony, or someone, had definitely been wearing it for some time.

I wonder what happened to the Cross Punisher, Vash thought. How could I just leave it there?

"Put it on, Vash," Tony said quietly, his golden predator's eyes gleaming in the dim cave.

Vash obeyed numbly, sliding the coat over his shirt and pants. It was like reuniting with an old friend. Like greeting an old lover...

Vash closed his eyes, feeling the tails of the coat brushing his legs, just like old times...

So easy to become the Humanoid Typhoon again.

"I'm not," he said aloud, his eyes snapping open. "I'm not a killer. I won't kill, ever again. I will honor Rem's memory."

A slight smile danced around Tony's narrow mouth. "Ah, but Vash, you are about to watch that bitch's legacy die, along with her last surviving relative."

"You'll have to kill me first."

"Don't be silly, Vash. I'll kill you last. First, you'll get to watch a world die."

"Does Knives... want me dead, then?" Strange that it should hurt so much, after all that he'd seen of Knives...

Tony just laughed, and waved a hand casually at Angie. "Come with me. Both of you."

Angie straightened her back. "I need to get my son ready to go, Tony."

"What, that vegetable?" Tony gave a contemptuous glance at the boy huddled in the corner. "He's not coming."

Angie's jaw dropped. "Do-- do you expect me to leave him here?"

"I expect you to stop clinging to damaged goods," Tony said quietly. "It won't matter soon, anyway."

Angie clenched her hands so hard the knuckles were white. "I'm not leaving without my son."

"Have it your way, then."

The boy, Lucas, gave a sudden, strangled cry. His body bucked, and blood trickled from his mouth.

Angie screamed. Vash flung himself at Tony, not even sure what he intended to do, with some crazy idea of sending them both flying off into the shaft. But he stopped as if he'd hit a wall. He struggled to free the gun from his mechanical arm, and even that refused to move.

 _He's so powerful! How did he get so powerful?_

"Please," Vash gasped. "Please... I'm begging you..."

Tony only smiled. There was another tortured scream from Angie. Vash managed a glance in her direction, and saw that she was cradling the boy's body in her arms.

"Angie -- is he --"

Angie was shaking all over. Gently she lowered Lucas to the floor, and slowly, mechanically, reached for a blanket and pulled it over his bloody face.

"You," she whispered, glaring at Tony. "Vash was right about you. You're so much worse than you ever were before. I'll never help you."

"Is that right?" Tony asked quietly. "Listen."

They listened. In the sudden silence of the cave, they could hear a high-pitched voice, somewhere far below, echoing through the tunnels. A child's laughter.

"I could kill all of them as easily as that one," Tony said. "Come up to the mesa, both of you."

He picked up the white metal case again -- Vash saw the strain in the muscles of his arm, and realized it had to be quite heavy -- and, kicking the child gate out of the way, swung out onto the rope ladder. Vash found that he could move again.

Angie was still kneeling by her son's body, staring after Tony with dry, hate-filled eyes.

"Angie!" Tony called. "Coming?"

Vash tried to put a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off, and when she looked at him her face was blank, as if she didn't know who he was. She picked up Lucas's body, wrapped in its blanket, and followed Tony -- and ran into trouble immediately, finding herself unable to climb the ladder with the body in both arms.

"Let me help you," Vash offered.

"Let go of me," Angie mumbled. She managed to sling the child's body over one shoulder and hold it steady with one hand while climbing with the other. Vash came beneath her, thinking he could at least catch her if she fell.

Tony looked down from above. "What are you dragging that useless thing for?"

Angie didn't answer. Vash saw her body stiffen, then relax, and she went on climbing.

 _She's going to do something desperate,_ Vash thought. _And who can blame her? That bastard just killed her son. And I couldn't stop him._

He raised his hand to his face, brushed away the useless tears. No time now for remorse or regret. Somehow, he had to get them out of this alive. Somehow, he had to stop Tony, without getting Angie killed, without getting the other children killed.

 _So many have died because of me... why am I cursed like this?_

At the top of the shaft, Tony waited for them. Angie clambered out of the hole with difficulty and shifted her son's body to a more comfortable grip.

"You're not taking that thing along," Tony said. "You should probably find a nice place to leave it."

"I'm not helping you any more," Angie said, her words a toneless mumble.

Tony laughed. "That's what you said all those years ago, at Nadia's place -- remember? Yet here you are."

Vash scrambled up into the tunnel, unnoticed by the two of them. Angie knelt and laid Lucas's body down, pulled the blanket back to caress his face, then wrapped it up, and stood.

"Yes. I remember," she said, her arms stiff at her sides. "You killed them all, Nadia and all her descendants, to assuage your wounded pride."

"To avenge that bitch's infidelity!" Tony snapped, his voice rising above his usual soft whisper. "You know that she cheated on -- on-- She cheated on --"

Again that stuttering hesitation, the same that Vash had noticed before.

"On _me_ ," Tony finished.

Angie was walking towards him slowly. "I should have killed you then, but I was only a child. I didn't have the strength. I didn't have the courage."

Tony smiled. "So what are you going to do? Kill me now?"

Vash didn't know what to do. Shoot Tony? Shoot _Angie?_ She carried no weapon that he could see. Tony, too, appeared unconcerned.

 _Oh, Rem, what should I do...?_

Angie stopped a few paces in front of Tony. "I'm sorry. I have to," she said, and she didn't appear to be speaking to Tony, but rather directing her words downward...

Speaking to the children...

What is she going to _do?_ Vash's heart almost stopped beating, and he knew suddenly with horrifying certainty that the greatest danger at the moment wasn't Tony, or Legato, but Angie. He saw her hand move slightly, and she did have something in her hand, something very small.

Her good-luck charm...

"No!" Vash screamed at her, and he saw clearly, too clearly -- saw her twist the little gray cube and throw it into Tony's face. He couldn't even shoot it out of the air -- it wouldn't help --

There was a blinding flash of light, and the shockwave knocked Vash backwards, almost threw him down the shaft.

Then the mountain fell on top of them.


	14. Dodge City

Sand had decided she liked traveling with Alex a lot better than traveling by herself. It wasn't just that the company was nice to have, although it was.

Nope -- Alex had a motorcycle. A real, honest-to-goodness motorcycle.

Granted, it didn't always run that well... gasoline was tough to find in the villages they passed through, at least gasoline that hadn't been adulterated with water... and spare parts appeared to be nonexistent... but still! A motorcycle! With his waist-length hair, leather jacket and sunglasses, he looked the perfect part of the biker rebel sweeping into town to carry the rebellious young heroine away from a life of drudgery washing dishes in a roadside inn ... Well, okay, Alex was a bit old to actually play the part, but he sure did look it.

He called the motorcycle Angelina VI.

Sand loved to clasp her arms around his waist and lean forward as they raced down one lonely desert road after another.

Just the two of them. Self-sufficient.

She had to be careful not to lean forward too far, though, or he might feel the shape of the gun under her clothing.

Her favorite time of the day was evening, when the red light of the setting suns slanted across the desert, when the blistering heat had begun to fade just enough that the cool wind felt delicious, whipping back Alex's hair into her face as they rode down the winding desert roads. On long straight stretches, Alex liked to open up the throttle and they raced their own shadow, veering around crawling delivery trucks and lone travelers plodding beside the road.

When dusk fell over the desert, they would make camp beside the road, building a tiny fire that Sand fed with handfuls of scraggly desert grass. Alex told dirty jokes and made her laugh, but never spoke about himself. Sand realized that after several days on the road, she knew no more about Alex than she had when they left March City -- nor did he about her. The only time Alex ever mentioned his past was one evening when Sand's thoughts had turned to the little girl, Ellie.

"I wonder whatever happened to her," Sand said, folding her arms behind her head and staring up at the stars. "I wonder if her parents ever found her."

"Probably. She wasn't skinny or wearing rags; her folks took good care of her. They probably showed up right after we left."

Sand giggled. "I loved the look on her face when she saw you!"

"What look?"

"You know -- the look like she thought she was being abducted by a madman."

"Very funny."

"Have you thought about shaving?" Sand said. "You don't seem to be a bad-looking guy under all that scruff, and you might be a little more ... approachable if you didn't look like you were coming off a two-week bender."

"Well, thanks so much. I feel really good about myself now. I was kinda proud of the beard, too. Guys in my family have trouble growing facial hair."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like it came out. You were pretty good with Ellie, in spite of all that."

"Thanks. You too."

"I mean it. You're really good with kids," Sand said wistfully. "Do you have any of your own?"

Alex glanced at her, but she couldn't see his eyes. "No. In a way, I once did," he said. "They weren't my own children, but they were good little kids. I think the only time in my life I was ever truly happy... was with them. I lost them through my own conceit and stupidity. I can never go back."

"Maybe you could someday," Sand said, and then for no reason that she could figure out, she added, "Your ticket to the future is always blank."

Alex's head snapped up and he stared at her for a moment.

"You make that up?" he asked.

"I think I heard it somewhere," Sand mumbled.

 _What one of us knows, we all know..._

Alex stared at her for a moment more, then shook his head with a laugh, dismissing her words. "That's very deep. You should write greeting cards, T-- Dammit!"

"What?" Sand asked, startled out of her own dark thoughts.

"Nothing. I just started to call you by the name of someone I once knew, a long time ago. I can't believe how much you remind me of... never mind."

Sand gazed at him, his face hidden in the fire's dancing shadows. _What pain is concealed in your past, Alex Daniels?_

But she had enough pain of her own to deal with. Guilt haunted her -- an odd, nagging guilt about an incident she could not remember. Something had destroyed the town where she grew up, and killed two old women who were the only people, besides Alex, who'd ever been nice to her. She knew that she had been involved somehow, but she did not know how.

The Voice knew. The Voice had all the answers, and it whispered them to her, as she lay awake through the long desert nights, with the silver gun strangely hot against her side. It murmured seductively into her ear, spinning fantasies of power and death. _You never need fear anything again,_ it whispered against a background of crackling blue light.

Sand gritted her teeth and drove it away, while a low headache throbbed in her temples. _Shut up. I won't listen to you._

"You sleeping all right, kid?" Alex said to her in the morning. "You look tired."

"I'm all right. Everything's fine."

Alex looked at her a moment longer, then stared up at the suns. "Well, we're making good time. Not too much farther to where we're going."

But early that afternoon, the motorcycle died, expiring by the side of the road with a dusty cough.

"Sooo...." Sand said, slipping off the machine and staring at it speculatively. "Is that what happened to the other five Angelinas?"

"Piece of junk," Alex muttered, kicking one of the tires.

"Oh, don't be so hard on the poor thing." Sand knelt beside the machine. "From the sound of the engine the last few miles, something might have come a little bit loose..." She stared at the unfamiliar internal combustion engine for a few moments.

"You don't know a damn thing about engines, do you?" Alex said, behind her.

"I've seen a couple cars in the village," Sand answered absently. "From a distance. And the bus to March City, of course."

"Oh, great. You've seen a couple cars. Look, just get out of the way and let me handle it before you break something, okay?"

"But it's so simple-looking," Sand protested, tracing wires with her fingers. "I mean, you can easily see that this goes here... and this of course goes here ... and this must ... yeah, I bet if you just wipe the sand out of this..."

The motorcycle sputtered to life immediately when she turned the key.

"What the hell...?"

"I think it just had some sand in the thingie," Sand explained solemnly, "and that other thingie was a little loose, so I tightened it."

"You've worked on engines before."

"No, never. Well, I've watched you work on this one," she admitted. "There wasn't anything else to do."

"And you can tell what's wrong just by looking at it? Damn, what are you, some kind of genius?"

Sand's eyes dropped. She could hear the voices of the kids in the village, whenever she'd quote from a book she read last year, or show them how to fix something totally self-evident to her: _What are you, some kind of freak?_

"It's just luck," she mumbled. _Bad luck._ "I don't know anything. I just guess and got lucky, that's all. Next time I won't be lucky."

"No, I appreciate your help. Really."

Sand glanced up at him. He didn't have that look, the one she'd come to dread -- the look that said _You are different from us, and we hate you for it._

Why don't you hate me for being different, Alex? she wondered.

Sand's fixit job on the motorcycle enabled them to limp it along, but they were not making much forward progress. At the next small town they came to, Alex left the main road and bumped the motorcycle along the town's single dusty street. The rumble of the engine was the only sound, except for a radio playing somewhere distantly. A faded sign swinging from a leaning signpost read, _Welcome to Dodge City._

"City, huh?" Alex murmured, looking at the one-story adobe houses lined crookedly along the street. "We're definitely in the sticks here, eh kid?"

Sand smiled a little and leaned against his back, her arms clasped around his waist. Her headache was back, throbbing agonizingly behind her eyes. Each jolt of the motorcycle sent a sharp burst of pain exploding at the base of her skull.

The only people in sight were a man and a woman on the shaded porch of the sheriff's office. Alex pulled the motorcycle into the nearest patch of shade and dismounted. "Hey, keep an eye on Angelina VI, kid. I'll ask these folks if anybody in town might be able to sell me a carburetor."

Sand nodded and slid off, sitting down beside the machine. She watched Alex approach the two people on the porch. The woman stood up. She was tall and lanky, but surprisingly young to be wearing the sheriff's star pinned to her faded work shirt. She looked Alex up and down, and her lips compressed to a thin line.

"Howdy, ma'am," Alex said at last, when the woman didn't speak. He held out his hand. "Alex Daniels."

The woman studied his hand. "Are you really," she said, a slight smile touching her homely face. "Well, I'm Sheriff Dodd."

"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

"The pleasure's all mine."

Alex waved a hand at the motorcycle. "Listen, we've been having some mechanical trouble. Is there anywhere around here that I can get parts?"

The woman hesitated for a moment. "Might try Eddie's place. Down a ways, past the saloon. He does some mechanical work for the folks around here. Fixing mining equipment. That kind of thing. I assume you've got money."

"Of course we do," Alex said, sounding wounded. They were still using Sand's dwindling supply of doubledollars.

"Good. Just do your business here, don't cause trouble, and be out of town by sundown."

Alex gave her a little salute and walked back to the motorcycle and Sand. "Man," he said to her, under his breath. "They don't exactly roll out the welcome wagon for strangers in this town, do they? At least nobody's shooting at us."

He walked the bike down the street, followed by Sand, who gave the lanky woman sheriff a little smile as she went by. The woman watched them grimly, never smiling, her eyes never moving from their backs as they walked down the street.

Sand shivered. She'd seen hate in that woman's eyes, hate and pain. Perhaps outsiders had hurt her in the past. She would be glad to be gone from this place.

They found Eddie's without trouble -- there was a sign hanging over the door that read Eddie's Garage. Alex tapped on the weathered wood. "Hey, anybody home?"

After a moment the door was opened by a barefoot girl of nine or ten. She stared up at him with unabashed curiosity. "Hey, who're you?"

Alex squatted down to bring himself onto her eye level. Sand, watching, thought with an inward grin, _He really does like kids._

"Hey there, squirt. Is your dad home?" He pointed at the bike. "I've heard he can fix things."

"You mean my uncle," the girl said, and hollered over her shoulder, "Hey, Uncle Eddie! Customers!"

She opened the door wider. Sand -- blinking sunspots out of her eyes -- could see behind her into a large open room strewn with half-dissassembled pieces of equipment. The floor was strewn with spare parts. Long benches ran down each wall, with more tools and pieces of machinery piled in apparently haphazard fashion.

"C'mon," the girl said.

A man appeared from behind the bulk of what looked like some kind of tractor, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. "What've we got here, Tommie?"

"Customers," the girl said, and scuttled off shyly.

Eddie shook hands with them. Alex introduced them and sketched out their problem.

"Carburetor, huh? Could be, from what you've said. Could be dirt in the fuel line, hell, any of a hundred things. Here, bring it over here."

Alex wheeled the bike as indicated. "Who's the kid?"

"Oh, Tommie? My assistant. Her folks died in a bandit raid a few years ago. Her dad was my cousin."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

Eddie shrugged. "Shit happens, don't it?" He fumbled among the junk on the bench near his hand, found a half-empty bottle of heavy brown glass and took a swig. He offered the bottle to Alex, who accepted a drink.

"We don't get many people come through here," Eddie said, taking another swallow. "Hell, it's been years since anybody knocked on my door that didn't live around here. How'd you folks find my place?"

"The sheriff pointed it out to us."

Eddie laughed. "She's a peach, ain't she? That woman's the best thing to happen to this town in years. Hell, when she got here, year and a half ago, a law-abiding man couldn't walk down the street without carrying a gun. If you've traveled around, you know how bad it can get. We lived in fear of raids from the bandit gangs."

"And she cleaned it up?" Alex said.

"Yeah, and how! Took out two gangs of bandits all by herself, and now here's the crazy part -- she didn't kill a one of 'em. Says she doesn't believe in taking a life. I tell you, when she first got here, she was about laughed out of town. Nobody's laughing now. Around the time she got here, I'd half decided to pack up and take Tommie somewhere else, but she took this place and turned it into somewhere worth living. She don't look like much, but she's tough as nails. Hell, and she can't be more than twenty-one, twenty-two."

"More like nineteen, I think," Alex said, and then looked startled and hastily changed the subject. "Anyway, how long do you think it might take to repair my bike? We've got a schedule to keep."

"Won't know 'til I get it open. Could be a few minutes, could be the rest of the day."

Sand had stopped paying attention to their conversation. Her head was hurting again, and she pressed her palms against her eyes. Alex noticed and made a shushing gesture at Eddie.

"Hey, kid, you okay?"

"Tired," Sand said. "Is there anywhere around here I could sleep for a while?"

Eddie pointed behind him. "You're welcome to find a place in the shop. Don't mind if you folks hang out around here. Hell, nowhere else to go in this town."

"Thanks," Alex said, and added, "We'll pay you well for this, don't worry."

Eddie shrugged. "Wasn't going to mention it. So few people come through here, heck, it's worth it just for the gossip. So what's going on out in the real world?"

While Alex talked about the explosion of the March City Plant -- carefully skirting any involvement the two of them might have had in the incident -- Sand wandered off into the shadowy depths of the shop. It was almost cool in here. She found a rough, oil-stained blanket and made it into a little nest, curling up in a tight ball.

It was getting harder and harder to hold the Voice at bay. Its tactics had grown more varied, and ranged from wheedling and cajoling, to vicious abuse. And under that was a babble of other voices, some crying, some afraid. Ignoring all of them was getting to be a constant effort, and it made her so tired, especially since she hardly ever slept anymore.

 _You are a fool,_ the Voice ranted. _You are part of Me. You have no independent existence. You delude yourself by thinking of yourself as an individual..._

Oh shut up, Sand thought wearily, and managed to force herself into an uneasy semi-doze, compelled by the exhaustion of her body.

 

* * *

 

While Sand slept, Alex chatted with Eddie until the older man's exuberance grew too wearing, and then he begged off, saying that he wanted to take a walk and explore the town. After passing the bottle back and forth for half the afternoon, he was starting to get slightly dizzy, and he still wanted to be capable of driving by the time they left.

Evening was coming on, and the two suns sank towards the rim of the world. Alex smoked a crumpled cigarette as he slouched down the dusty street, hoping to spot the sheriff. He wasn't disappointed. She was sitting on the edge of her office's porch, long legs dangling towards the ground. The man she'd been talking to had long since gone.

"Evening," Alex said.

Sheriff Dodd looked up. "Still here, I see. It's getting damn near sunset."

"My bike's getting fixed."

"Eddie took the job?"

"He seemed happy to do it," Alex said, and added, "We talked about you."

"Oh, did you now."

"He admires you a lot," Alex said. "He says you've done some good things for this town."

She straightened up, pressing her hands on her knees. "There's still a lot to be done."

"He says you never take a life."

"Is that right."

"I wanted to talk to you about that."

Sheriff Dodd stared at him for a moment, then slid down from the porch. Standing, she was a little taller than him. "So, Alex Daniels... want to take a walk?"

"I'd like that."

They strolled down the street in the lengthening shadows, past Eddie's place, and onto a winding path leading out of town. Alex let Sheriff Dodd lead the way. He didn't know what to say to her. He felt that there were things that had to be said, but didn't know what they were.

Finally Sheriff Dodd stopped walking. She turned around, and raised one hand to her chest. Slowly, deliberately, she tore the star loose from her shirt, and dropped it on the ground.

"What are you doing?"

"Resigning," Sheriff Dodd said quietly. She drew her pistol.

"Woah. Woah, lady. What are you planning to do with that?"

"Guess," she said, pointing it at him.

Instinctively he raised his hand towards his shoulder -- and it closed on empty air, and he lowered it. Dodd's eyes narrowed.

"Cornered, you reach for a weapon, even yet," she said. "You _are_ the man I thought you were. But you looked different... and I couldn't do this until I was sure."

Alex spread his hands. "Look, lady, I'm not carrying any weapons. I'm unarmed. What happened to not shooting people, anyway? For that matter, what kind of sheriff goes around shooting innocent, unarmed travelers?"

"But you're far from innocent... aren't you?"

"How do you know so much about me, lady?"

"You know who I am," Sheriff Dodd said. "You recognized me the moment you saw me, just as I recognized you. But you wanted to play some kind of game, so I played along as well. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. I've waited years for this, and when I saw you walk into my town, alone except for that girl ... I knew that my heart had not lied to me, all those years ago. I knew you weren't to be trusted the moment I saw you, but I merely stepped aside and let the person I loved most walk out of my life ... into your murderous hands."

Alex's mouth dropped open. "Hold it, hold it, hold it! You think I killed -- oh, man. You been walking around in the sun without a hat again, L--?"

"Shut up!" She gripped the pistol in both hands, firm and unwavering. "I don't intend to talk to you. I can tell you're a sweet talker; I saw that, all those years ago, when you talked a gentle person into becoming a killer like yourself."

"Is _that_ what you think I did?"

"I saw it. And I've looked up your record, in the years since. You were supposed to be dead, but I knew better. It couldn't be that easy. I know what you were, what you are. Do you deny that you deserve to die a thousand times over for the things you've done?"

Alex stared into her hard, accusing eyes, and there he saw the reflection of his past, of all the betrayals, the murders, the blood... the things Sand had seen in him, the things he'd tried so hard to escape.

"No," he whispered. "But you must believe me when I tell you that the man whose crimes you've studied is gone--"

He saw the slight motion of her finger on the trigger because he'd survived most of his life by watching for things like that. He flung himself down as the crack of the pistol echoed down the canyon. Pain blazed down his side. He hit the ground hard and started to roll behind a boulder, but a boot on his chest stopped him, knocked all the air out of his lungs.

"You won't escape me again!" the sheriff cried, staring at him down the barrel of her gun.

Alex lay flat on his back, his long hair spread out in the sand around his head. He felt blood trickling down his side and wondered how badly he was injured. There wasn't any pain, just a dull stinging ... but he'd been shot enough times to know that the painless wounds could sometimes be the most dangerous.

"And what will you do then? What will you do after you kill me? Will you become one of the outlaws you used to hunt, Sheriff?" he asked, looking up the gun into her unforgiving eyes. Those eyes looked straight into the darkness of his soul, and he wanted to flee from their withering, pitiless light.

"Stop calling me that!"

"No, I won't. That's what you are. The people in this town admire you. There are so few sources of hope in our world, and too many people like me -- don't give it up, Sheriff Dodd. Not for me. Don't give it up just to kill me. Don't desecrate the memory of that man you hold so dear--"

"The man you killed!"

"No! God, no. Never in a million years, Sheriff. I'd rather die myself than hurt him."

"Then where is he? I knew, when I saw you walk away from me forever -- that you'd walk that bloody road together until death itself separated you."

"And it did," Alex said. He felt so sick he could barely speak -- maybe from the wound in his side, maybe from the pain of those long-ago memories of friendship and betrayal.

"You admit it!"

"No! Not his death! Mine!"

"Yours?" she repeated, confused.

"The man you've hunted, the man you think I am -- is gone. Dead. Perhaps I'm really making a fresh start... or maybe it's just easier to run than try to heal the wounds I've created in the past ... but I walk a different road now, Sheriff. That's why I don't carry a gun. The last time I had a man in my gun sights, he was the last surviving member of my family... well, almost the last surviving member, anyway. The last one who meant anything to me. And I could have killed him, and he deserved to die... but I didn't kill him. That day I laid down my gun and I swear I will never pick up another."

"Coward," the sheriff spit through her teeth. "You are running, just like you said. Sometimes everyone has to pick up a gun to protect those who can't protect themselves."

Alex closed his eyes, unable to bear her accusing gaze, throwing back into his face the philosophy he used to live by. "I used to believe that, too, until I met someone who made me believe that it might be possible to live as I live now... doing no harm."

"Running away!"

"Yes! All right, is that what you wanted to hear? Yes, I am running. I can't save the world, Sheriff. It's people like you who have to do that. Strong people. Brave people. You're right, I am a coward... it's all I can do to save myself. I can't take on the salvation of an entire planet. I made that decision and I hate myself every day for doing it, but it's far too late to go back now."

The gun's muzzle was warm against his throat, quavering with the shaking of the sheriff's hands. Alex didn't open his eyes. "Shoot me, then. I'm not afraid of dying; I lost that fear a long time ago. But know this -- if you do this, if you turn your back on your responsibilities as a lawman, then you're making the same choice that I did. You're abdicating your responsibility just as I did mine. And I can't fault you for it... after all, I did the same thing. It takes a lot more courage to be strong."

The gun trembled against his neck.

"There's just one thing I want you to do. If you do this, Sheriff, if you kill me and walk the path of destruction... then see that the girl is safe, would you? She needs someone to look after her. She's going down a dangerous road herself--"

"Shut up!"

The butt of the gun smashed against his cheekbone. Alex rolled over, clutching his face in agony. When he could finally see again through the red haze of pain, the sheriff was standing over him, pinning her star back on her chest.

"You talk too goddamn much," she snarled. "I knew if I let you talk, you'd talk me out of killing you. Bastard."

"Ow. You didn't have to hit me."

"I had to do that much, at least." She looked down at him. "That bit about the girl at the end... for crying out loud, don't you think it was a bit much? What is she to you, anyway? Your kid or something?"

"No. I don't have kids. She just reminds of someone I used to know... someone you knew, as well."

The sheriff's mouth quirked, softened.

"You know, she does, at that. I thought it was just my own wishful thinking... So now you're protecting this one because you couldn't protect the other one, is that it?"

"Something like that, perhaps." Alex picked himself up and felt at his side. The bullet wound was only a scratch, but it was starting to sting mightily, almost enough to drown out the throbbing in his jaw.

"Need to get that looked at?"

"No. If it leaves a scar, it won't be my first."

"Nor the first one I've given somebody, I'm afraid," Sheriff Dodd murmured. "How did the two of us fall so far from our ideals, I wonder."

"I've fallen much farther than you ever will." Alex looked up at her, and smiled, though it hurt his jaw. "It seems to me that you're doing well... living by his ideals."

The momentary softness in her face vanished.

"I don't need or want to be congratulated by you. I'll let you live... but I still don't like you much. You make me think of too many things I don't like about myself .... Just get out of my town by sundown, and don't come back. And protect that girl."

She turned and started to walk away, down the hill.

"Hey! Lina!"

The young sheriff looked over her shoulder, startled at the use of her given name.

"Lina. If I ever see him again... I'll tell him that you're doing fine. That you're making him proud."

Lina looked back at him, silhouetted against the sun, and in the tall, capable woman, he saw the echo of the scrawny girl he'd met so long ago. Suddenly she raised her hand, the first two fingers crossed over each other in a heartbreakingly familiar salute.

"Love and peace!" she called. "Tell him that, too. Tell him I haven't forgotten the things he said to me. If you see him."

She turned and walked back toward the town with a smooth, confident stride.

"Yeah." Alex stared down at the sand, spotted with his blood. "Love and peace. You too, Lina."

The bleeding from his side had slowed and he withdrew his hand cautiously. The fingers were covered with blood. Alex smiled faintly; what an appropriate metaphor for his life. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped two matches trying to light it.

 _Ah Lina. You were right about me. You should have tried harder to keep him from leaving with me, all those years ago._

He was doubly damned. He'd betrayed his closest friend in the world, not once but twice. He'd abandoned the woman who loved him. Sand wasn't safer traveling with a man like him. She might as well be alone...

Alex's hand closed on the lit cigarette, crushing it. He didn't even feel the pain of the lit end burning his fingers.

 _I swore to put down the guns! Why do I still feel this way? Why can't I let it go... even after all these years?_

 _Where is my paradise?_


	15. Lost Ship

For a long time, Meryl, Knives and Lamia just stood, staring up at the great curving bulk of the Seeds ship. Then Ellie got bored, and started tugging on Meryl's hand. "I'm hungry," she whined.

"I'm sorry, honey. Of course you are."

They made camp out of sight of the ship. Neither Meryl or Lamia mentioned it, but there was something chilling about that great relic, and they didn't feel comfortable turning their backs on it.

Knives didn't come with them to the campsite. This made Meryl extremely nervous, picturing all kinds of ominous things he might be doing with the ancient ship. But she had to tend to Ellie.

Lamia helped her make lunch in silence, and then sat and stared into the fire while Meryl fed Ellie.

"Miss Meryl," she said at last, in a hesitant voice quite unlike her usual brash voice of command. "Do you know what that thing is?"

"It's called a ship," Meryl said.

"What is a ship?"

Lamia never questioned that Meryl would know the answers to her questions. For a moment, her adult guise had slipped, and the child underneath peeked through -- a scared child, looking to an adult to tell her what to do.

Meryl tried to remember what Vash had told her about Project Seeds. She had a good memory, but so many of the things he'd said had made no sense to her. While she never believed that Vash would lie, she had also let many of his stories slip into the part of her mind where she filed fantasies and legends and other impossible things. Yet here, before their eyes, was evidence of the other worlds Vash had described.

"It's ... kind of like a car, but it travels between worlds," she said. "It brought our ancestors here."

"Oh... lost technology!" Lamia's face cleared. This was something she knew, at least. "Like those metal monsters that chased my sister."

"Yes, but hopefully less dangerous."

Lamia glanced over her shoulder. "I wonder what Mr. Vash is doing over there."

Up to no good, probably. "I don't know," Meryl said. "Maybe one of us should go over there... just to check on him, I mean."

"Good idea," Lamia said, hopping to her feet. "I'll take him some food."

 _I didn't mean YOU._ "I'll help," Meryl said.

Lamia glared at her, their temporary camaraderie lapsing. She set off with a small bundle of food, the rifle -- which she was never without -- tucked into the crook of her arm. Meryl sighed, and followed, holding Ellie's hand.

There was no sign of Knives near the car, so they walked along the side of the great ship. "Mr. Vash!" Lamia called. _Vash... Vash... Vash.._. the echoes answered, up and down the canyon.

Oh, this is NOT good, Meryl thought. I was right all along. It's just been an act. Now he's showing his true colors...

"Oh, there you are," Lamia said. "We were worried about you."

Knives was sitting on a boulder, almost under the curve of the ship's side. He glanced up distractedly, and murmured "Thanks" to Lamia, accepting the food.

"What are you doing?" Meryl said.

Lamia turned on her. "Meryl! Let the man eat!"

Knives shrugged, and between bites of the sandwich he said, "Trying to figure out how to get in."

Meryl looked where he was looking. There was a strange round port set in the side of the ship.

"Is that some kind of door?"

Knives nodded, his mouth full.

"But how does it open?" Meryl asked, running her fingers along the metal. Paint flaked off on her fingers.

Knives pointed to a square box set into the side of the ship near her feet. "That's the key-box. The ship is twisted, you see. Normally the port would be high above the ground, and you'd have to climb a ladder to get there. And that key-box would be set at about the height of your shoulder."

Meryl knelt. Ellie bent down with her, inquisitive like a puppy.

"How does it work?"

"Open the cover," Knives said, and Meryl did. She saw a panel of keys labeled with letters and numbers.

"It's a typewriter!"

"Of sorts. You type in a code, and the door opens. If everything still works."

Meryl pushed a key, and jumped when a small flat panel beside the keyboard lit up with the letter she'd just pressed.

"After you type the code, you press ENTER," Knives said, at her elbow. Meryl jumped again. He was so damn _quiet_. She wished Lamia would put a bell on him.

"Like this?" Lamia said, leaning over Meryl's other shoulder.

"Don't--" Meryl said, but she'd already pressed it. The screen flashed the words INCORRECT ACCESS CODE.

"And you don't know what the code is?" Meryl said to Knives.

He shook his head. "No. I'd hoped _she_ might be able to tell me, but she is too deeply asleep."

" _She?_ "

"The Plant on the ship."

Meryl looked up at the ship's bulk -- torn by rocks, massive sections of the metal hull peeled away like the skin of a fruit. "The Plant is still... functional? Alive? Whatever you call it?"

"Where do you think the power for the key-box is coming from?"

Meryl glared at him. "I have no idea. I've never seen one of these things before in my life."

Knives had a slight smile, and didn't even flinch at her tone. Double Suns, he was teasing her! No doubt about it -- he'd loosened up a lot in the last few days.

 _It's all an act. He's an evil, evil man and you're falling right into his trap, you fool!_

"Look," Ellie said. "I can type my name."

"Honey, don't play with that!" Meryl cried, slapping the child's hands away from the keyboard. Startled, Ellie began to cry.

"Hush..." Meryl sighed, putting her arms around the child.

Ellie pushed away from her. "You're always mean to me!" she wailed.

"Ellie, look here," Knives said. He reached under his cloak and took out a candy bar. "I was saving this for later, but you can have it now."

Ellie took the candy, sniffling. "And what do you say?" Lamia prompted automatically, though her attention was elsewhere -- she was staring at the ground in front of the door.

"Thank you," Ellie said, and added, glaring at Meryl, "I like you better'n _her_."

" _What?_ " Meryl demanded.

"Hey, you guys," Lamia said. "Check this out. Do these look like tracks to you?"

Lamia was right. The ground in front of the door was scuffed and trampled, more thoroughly than the four of them could possibly have done. Only in this sheltered place had the tracks remained; as soon as they left the immediate area of the door, the desert sands must have covered them.

"Someone's been here," Lamia said.

"Not recently, it looks like," Meryl said.

Lamia shook her head. "Shows how much you know. Out here in the desert, it can take no more than days to totally erase tracks."

"Do you have to argue with everything I say?" Meryl snapped.

Lamia bristled. "It's not my fault that you're a sheltered office girl."

Meryl reached for her guns.

"Ladies--" Knives began.

" _Stay out of this!_ " they both yelled at him. Knives retreated.

But, though she'd never admit it, the interruption gave Meryl a chance to get a grip on herself. She sighed. "As long as they're not in there now, waiting for us."

"I doubt it's that recent," Lamia said, seeming a bit calmer herself, though not ready to apologize.

Ellie's pudgy, chocolate-stained fingers crept toward the keyboard again. "Honey--" Meryl said, seizing the little hand.

Ellie's eyes filled with tears again. "But I wanna--"

 _Didn't Millie ever scold this brat?_

Lamia sat down on a rock and unwrapped a candy bar for herself. "I really don't see what harm she could do. I mean, she might even stumble on the right code by accident."

At least it kept Ellie from whining. The child typed her name on the keypad, watching in delight as the letters marched across the screen as she typed. The typewriter never did this! Meryl sighed and sat down in the sand while Ellie played with various permutations of her name. Knives sat near her, crosslegged, staring off at the horizon while who-knows-what went through his head.

Is it possible that he really doesn't know how to get in? Meryl thought. How is it that he knew where the ship was, but he doesn't know how to open the door?

 _K-k-kreeeeeee....._

Meryl jumped.

"What the..." She turned and stared as the door began slowly to hitch backwards in its tracks. Ellie gave a little shriek and shrank away from it. Lamia dropped her candy bar, and Knives seemed surprised too.

The door lurched fully open, then began to slide closed again. They all stared as it slammed shut.

"Ellie," Meryl said. "What did you type?"

Ellie shriveled as the three adults converged on her. "I don't know!" she wailed, and started crying.

"Shh, shh..." Meryl soothed her.

"She just typed her name," Lamia said. "Didn't she?"

"Last I saw," Meryl said. She typed in ELLEN PHILOMELA WOLFWOOD THOMPSON.

Nothing happened.

"Maybe a part of her name... or a misspelling..." Meryl tried different combinations.

When she typed WOLFWOOD, the screen turned green and flashed THANK YOU.

They watched the door hitch open and then slide creakily closed.

"Wolfwood..." Meryl breathed. She typed it again, just to make sure, and hit ENTER.

Open. Close.

"Well?" Lamia said. "What is it?"

"Wolfwood," Meryl said. "Ellie's middle name. Does that sound familiar to you?" She watched Knives' face for reaction as she spoke, but there was nothing there. He just looked at her blankly.

Meryl shook her head to clear it. _Of course he knows who that is. He's just pretending that he's lost his memory, remember?_

"Wolfwood!" Lamia said. "That was the name of the priest who helped my sister. Do you think he's been here?"

"No," Meryl said shortly. "He's dead."

Lamia's face clouded over and Meryl thought, _That's right, I never told her._

Lamia stiffened her back, turning her face away from Meryl. "Everybody dies, right, Miss Meryl? Come on, let's see what's in there."

Meryl shivered, looking over her shoulder into the empty desert. When Lamia punched in the access code again, the flood of cooler air from inside the ship felt like the breath from a tomb.

"Hey, wait a minute," she said. "What are you planning on doing, feeling your way around? It's dark in there."

Lamia blushed. "I was about to say that," she snapped defensively.

"Yeah, right."

They went back to the campfire -- the two women still glaring at each other -- and made torches. Ellie begged for one, but the grownups refused.

"Hey! I opened the door! I'm a big girl!" She crossed her arms and refused to go anywhere.

Meryl considered leaving the little girl outside... but that raised the question of who would stay with her. Not Knives, certainly. She could stay herself, but that left Knives and Lamia to wander inside the ship unescorted, and she didn't trust either of them for a moment. Or she could leave Ellie in Lamia's care -- but that would mean going into the ship with Knives, and the thought horrified her.

"Here." Meryl made a little torch from a few twigs. "Just be very, very careful not to burn yourself."

Ellie giggled, waving the torch around like a carnival sparkler. Meryl sighed. They'd be lucky if she didn't set the entire ship on fire.

So the four traveling companions stepped through the ancient door. It slammed shut behind them, plunging them into a twilight lit only by the orange, flickering light of their torches.

They were standing in a metal corridor. The floor was slanting at a severe tilt.

"Up or down?" Meryl said. Her voice echoed weirdly in the close confines of the tunnel.

"Up," Knives said. The women looked at him. "The Plant chamber is near the center of the ship," he said. "We should wake her up first. Then we'll have light to see by, and possibly her help as well."

"Very clever," Meryl said, putting her free hand on one hip. "I see you're starting to drop the act, now that we've come so close to your goal."

"Miss Meryl!" Lamia snapped at her. "Leave Mr. Vash alone!"

 _He's not Vash, you poor deluded child... and now I'm starting to fall under his spell as well. If we go in here with him, we'll both die!_

But they went. The women took turns helping Ellie over the rougher places. Some of the corridors were twisted at almost a 90-degree angle to the ground; they had to brace themselves awkwardly against the sides and clamber up or down, trying not to set their hair on fire. Ellie lost her little torch on one of those excursions, but at least it went out immediately when it struck metal, rather than starting an inferno.

Meryl wished they'd brought rappelling gear.

 _We'll never find our way out of here,_ she thought. _Maybe Knives is deliberately getting us lost. He knows exactly where we're going._

Knives had an intent look on his face, rather like a retriever following a scent. Sometimes he'd inadvertently walk into a wall, back off, shake his head and try to find a way around.

 _Well, I THINK he knows where he's going._

"Are we there yet?" Ellie whined.

Knives paused to ruffle the kid's hair, a gesture that made Meryl blink with its disturbing Vash-ness. "If you three want to sit down and rest for a while, I can go on alone. We're quite near the Plant chamber."

"How do you know where it is?" Meryl asked.

"She's been talking to me while we travel, in my dreams," Knives said. "It's ... confusing. She doesn't really know how to communicate in the manner of mortal creatures. But I've understood some of what she's told me. You can wait here--"

"Nope, we're fine," Meryl interrupted, picking Ellie up in the arm not encumbered with her torch.

"I can carry--"

"No," Meryl said firmly. "I'm fine."

Knives met her eyes, and looked away. He turned without a further word, and started walking again. Meryl almost felt as if she should apologize. Firmly she squashed the rebellious impulse.

Knives was right; after only another few minutes, they emerged into a much wider space. The light of the torches gleamed off a great, milky globe in the middle of the room. The floor tilted gently, and Meryl had to set Ellie down so that Meryl could steady herself against the wall, fighting the irrational fear that she was going to fall towards that pale, glimmering thing.

"Please extinguish your torches," Knives said, his voice fallen almost to a whisper.

"Are you _crazy_?" Meryl retorted. "There's no way we can light them again in here! We'll be in the dark--"

"Please," Knives repeated. "It won't be dark, not in here. I need to be able to see."

"What are you talking about? It's completely dark."

"Please. Trust me."

That was the absolute wrong thing for him to say. Meryl glared defiantly. Until Lamia reached over and took her torch.

" _Hey!_ Traitor!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Meryl. We should do what Mr. Vash wants." Lamia jammed the business ends of both the torches against the metal.

"Lamia!" Meryl cried.

As the light of the torches vanished, a great darkness swept around her. Meryl gasped. She'd never been claustrophobic, but now irrational fear made her tremble. She was buried -- buried alive in a metal tomb.

But as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she realized that Knives was right. It wasn't totally dark. The huge light bulb in the middle of the room did glimmer with its own light -- faint and pale as starlight. Within that elusive glow, Meryl almost thought she could make out a humanlike shape, curled upon itself. When she looked directly at it, it disappeared. She had to peer out of the corners of her eyes.

"Meryl?" came Ellie's little voice. Meryl found the girl's hand, and squeezed it.

"Don't worry, honey. It's all right."

As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could discern a shape against the faint light. Knives was walking towards the light bulb. He must have raised one hand, for Meryl could make out the outlines of his fingers, pressed against the glass.

His murmured voice reached her. She couldn't understand the words.

And suddenly there was light.

Meryl gasped. So did Lamia.

The chamber was flooded with white light from many strip-panels set into the ceiling. The harsh white glare dispelled the shadowy mystery of the room. Suddenly they were standing in a rather dingy metal chamber, tilted at a slight angle, with a big light bulb in the middle of the room. The light bulb was glowing so brightly that Meryl couldn't bear to look at it, but from the corner of her eye she could dimly make out Knives, silhouetted by the light. He turned towards the two of them, and his soft voice came to them.

"I have some things to do here. If the two of you would like to look around..."

"Where are we supposed to go?" Meryl demanded, sitting down on the floor. Ellie immediately crawled onto her lap.

"Wherever you like." There was a hint of humor in Knives' voice.

"Come on, Miss Meryl." Lamia beckoned. "Let's explore, now that we can see."

"I don't wanna," Ellie whined, burrowing against Meryl's shirt.

"I think she's sleepy," Meryl said. "I wonder if we might find somewhere she could lay down for a nap?"

They left Knives alone in the Plant chamber, his face upraised to the radiance behind the glass, quietly communing. Meryl hated to do it, but Ellie's whining had reached a fever pitch. The little girl was definitely over-tired and cranky.

After some wandering through the twisted and broken corridors -- now illuminated by strip lights like the ones in the Plant chamber -- they came upon a room with some rows of odd, flat beds. Some of them had white sheets on them.

"It looks almost like a hospital or something," Lamia said, as Meryl laid Ellie down on one of the beds.

"Maybe it is," Meryl said. "These people must have needed hospitals too, I suppose."

While Ellie slept, the two of them wandered about the room, peering at all the strange pieces of equipment. Parts of the room had been gutted; exposed wires and disturbances in the dust showed where other machines had stood.

"Miss Meryl, there has definitely been someone in here," Lamia said, pointing at one of the beds. The white sheets were turned down and rumpled, clearly disturbed by someone sleeping in the bed.

Meryl shivered, but when she approached closely, she found that a fine layer of desert grit had sifted over the bed. "Not recently," she said. "Well, not _that_ recently, I suppose."

"Look at this," Lamia said. She picked up a blood-stained bandage off a dusty countertop near the bed and turned it over in her hands. The blood was so old it had turned brown, and it cracked and sifted down when she bent the fabric.

Meryl took the bandage. It seemed to have been torn from a larger piece of fabric, printed with a faded pattern -- like a piece of someone's shirt. "So people do come here from time to time."

"I think you're right, about this being some kind of hospital," Lamia said. "Maybe people come here sometimes when they're hurt."

"People from where? The nearest town is days and days away."

"I don't know. It was your stupid idea," Lamia muttered. "I'm just agreeing with you."

Meryl found herself watching the girl as they continued to poke about the room.

 _She acts all brash, but she has no self-confidence at all. I guess that's not surprising, growing up the way she did..._

"Lamia, do you mind if I ask a personal question?"

"Like it ever stopped you before," Lamia said, opening a cabinet and examining the bottles inside.

Meryl suppressed her irritation. "What happened to your mother? I know your sister's dead..."

Lamia gave her a level look. "Well, you're just all curious today, sis. She died not too long after we met you folks. She was tryin' to steal some bread to feed us kids and the store owner shot her. After that, we survived on our own, until my sister died too. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"I guess so..." Meryl felt guilt tighten in her chest, thinking of that brave woman with the tired, lined face. Wondering if she might have done something, when she met the little family on the bus, something to stave off their future tragedy...

 _Vash would say that one person's tragedy is everyone's tragedy..._

Damn it, I'm so tired of thinking about Vash! How does that man do what he does? It's like he crawls under everyone's skin and gets inside them. Once you've been around him, you can't ever go back to what you were before...

Even Wolfwood...

She hadn't thought about the priest in years. After the whole thing with Knives was finally over (Well, we thought it was over, Meryl amended mentally) one of the first things she'd done was to look up Nicholas Wolfwood from some of her contacts back at the agency. And so she had learned of his background as a hired killer, and knew why she'd been uneasy when she first met him.

 _But, though that may have been the kind of man he was in the past, it wasn't how he was after traveling with us for a while. No, I'm kidding myself -- after traveling with VASH. I think Millie helped too... but surely he must have known women in the past, a man like that, and none of them were strong enough to change him._

I remember how he fought so hard to protect the weak... I remember the anguish in his face when he killed that little boy. That man was no killer. Not any more.

That was the conclusion she'd reached, reading the file on Wolfwood on a long dusty afternoon, a cup of coffee cooling, unnoticed, at her elbow. Whatever he may have been once, the man she'd known had been a good man. Her friend, and her best friend's lover. And so she'd closed the file on him, and let him sleep his eternal sleep, and thought about him no more. Until now.

That code to the door... surely it must be some kind of odd coincidence. Wolfwood must have had ancestors on the ships, like all of them here. Maybe one of his ancestors was on this ship.

Meryl looked around with a little shiver. _I wonder if any of MY ancestors were on this ship? This is creepy..._

"Lamia..." she began, meaning to apologize, then broke off, her eyes sweeping the room. Lamia was gone.

"Lovely," Meryl muttered. "Between Knives, the five-year-old and that little brat, it's amazing I don't have ulcers by now... Well, I'm not going to follow her. I don't care where she's going. No sense in us both wandering around getting lost."

She sat down beside the sleeping Ellie, suddenly feeling very small, very alone. Very aware that she was totally dependent on Knives to find the way out of the ship --

 _Of course not. Don't be stupid. I have an excellent sense of direction. All I'd have to do is go out that door and then turn left... or was it right...?_

After a few moments' fuming, Meryl admitted to herself that she probably couldn't even find her way back to the Plant chamber.

"So that's great, just great," she said aloud. "I'm trapped in a wrecked piece of lost technology with two kids and a homicidal maniac with amnesia -- I mean, a homicidal maniac _pretending_ to have amnesia. And we're actually trying to find something called a Genesis Machine, which sounds more like something that should be left alone than anything I've ever heard of..."

"Meryl! Meryl!" Lamia burst into the room, but not from the door -- from the other direction. Meryl jumped.

"What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack to go with the ulcers you've already given me?" _I'm not relieved to see that little twit. Not in the slightest._ But she was.

Ellie stirred and blinked. "Mommie?"

"Your Mommie's not here," Meryl told her gently, and looked over at Lamia. "What is it?"

"Meryl, there's another door back there, and you've got to see where it goes. It's -- really, really strange."

Meryl sighed. "Is it dangerous? What about Ellie?"

"Oh, bring her. I don't think there's anything harmful. Well, not that I can see, anyway."

 _Great, that helps a lot._ But Meryl took Ellie by the hand, and the three of them walked through the hospital, or whatever it was. It was long and large, and at the other end were several separate chambers that could easily be isolation wards or intensive care units.

Past those chambers, there was a set of double doors, half open. Beyond them was a dark shaft. Meryl and Lamia had peeked into it during their exploration earlier, and beyond making a mental note to keep Ellie away from it, Meryl hadn't thought more of it. Lamia obviously had, though. As Meryl watched in disbelief, she leaned through the opening.

"In there? Are you nuts?"

Lamia disappeared inside. Meryl peered after her, making sure to keep Ellie -- who seemed quite fascinated by the whole business -- away from the edge. Lamia, she saw, was hanging onto a metal utility ladder running up the inside of the shaft.

"That's what you call _safe_?"

Lamia pointed down. "It's not far to fall. Look. Maybe fifteen feet, tops."

She was right; the shaft was blocked with rubble not far beneath them. Looking up, Meryl could see light streaming in, ten or twenty feet above their heads.

"It's just on the next floor. Come on up, chicken!" With that, Lamia scrambled up the ladder like a monkey, the ever-present rifle slung over her shoulder.

"Oh, wow!" Ellie tried to duck under Meryl's arm. "Neat!"

"Be careful," Meryl said wearily. She got under Ellie to catch the little girl if she fell, but Ellie seemed to enjoy the climb, and Meryl followed her.

They scrambled out into a large round room encircling a central pillar. One end of the room was covered, floor to ceiling, with dark glass or some similar material, reflecting their own shadows back at them. Banks of equipment lined the walls, along with a few other doors, some closed and some standing open.

Not all of the equipment was shut down. Glowing lights flickered from a few of the screens, ran up and down red and green wires, illuminated keyboards.

 _It must have come back on when the Plant was turned on, like the lights,_ Meryl thought.

"Don't go too far!" she called to Ellie, uselessly. The little girl was running around, looking at everything. Lamia, however, walked towards the pillar in the middle of the room.

"Is this what you brought us up here for?" Meryl said, following her. "It's a bit odd, but no stranger than anything else around here."

"No. Look at this."

The central feature of the pillar appeared to be a deep-set keyboard with a large screen above it, and a chair in front. The chair could be swiveled to face the pillar, or swiveled around to face the wall of dark glass. At the moment it was facing the pillar. And all up and down the pillar, all around the screen --

"Photographs?"

The photos were a variety of sizes and stuck up in what appeared to be random order. There were hundreds of them, but looking closer, Meryl saw that they were actually just copies of the same few images.

All of them seemed to be pictures of one particular woman. She was rather plain-faced and had long, curly brown hair. Most of the pictures were candid shots and appeared to be taken by someone close to her, for she was relaxed and often laughing. Here, she was lying on a couch, reading a book; here, she was outdoors in some strange, lush green place, laughing as she stared into the camera. She was alone in most of the pictures, but in some, she was with a young man with short, ginger-colored hair -- holding hands, or laughing with his arms around her.

One pictures was a group shot and there seemed to be only one copy of it, unlike the rest. It showed the same brown-haired woman sitting on a patch of grass with two other people, a woman and a child. The woman also had long hair, but hers was straight and jet-black. The little boy had short, shaggy hair, and serious, piercing eyes. Looking at him, Meryl experienced the oddest sense of deja vu.

"Hey, whatcha doin'?" Ellie demanded, shoving up between the adults.

"Don't you agree, Miss Meryl?" Lamia said. "This is really weird. It's like a shrine or something."

"That's exactly what it's like," Meryl agreed. She reached out and took down the photo of the two women to look at it more closely.

"Miss Meryl, you shouldn't -- What if you make somebody mad?"

"Nobody's here," Meryl snapped, though she felt a slight edge of nervousness at disturbing the odd display. She turned the photo over in her hands. The paper was smoother and whiter than any photo paper Meryl had seen, though its edges were yellow and brittle with age. She discovered writing on the back, in a looping, feminine hand.

> "My Dearest Nadia,
> 
> "Do you remember this day? Think of it often. On the new world, we will have more picnics like this, and we can show our children what it's like to walk beneath a blue sky without wearing an environment suit. I can't wait until you two have children of your own! I hope that our kids will be friends all down through their generations, just as you and Tony have been such good friends to me. I think they will.
> 
> "Your friend forever, Rem."

 

Rem?

She knew that name from somewhere. Had Vash mentioned it?

"Miss Meryl, you'd better put that back--"

"Quit bothering me," Meryl retorted, but she stuck the photo back up on the pillar, having to stand on tiptoe to do so. When she brought her hand down, the back of her hand brushed the screen.

It lit up.

"Hello. How may I help you today?" said a soft, pleasant female voice with an unfamiliar accent.

They all gasped and jumped away.

A few moments passed and nothing happened. Meryl approached the screen nervously. "Hello?"

"Hello. How may I help you today?"

"Who are you?"

"I am AI679332, the guidance computer of Project Seeds Unit 423. How may I help you today?"

"I didn't understand a word you just said," Meryl said. "Well, except for Project Seeds. Is that really what this is?"

"I do not understand that request." The screen flickered, and somewhere in the room, one of the pieces of equipment crackled. "I appear to have some memory errors. Running self-diagnostic now."

"Huh?" Meryl said.

"There you are," said a soft voice from behind them.

Meryl jumped.

"Mr. Vash!" Lamia said happily.

Knives wandered into the room from one of the other doors.

"How'd you know where to find us?" Meryl demanded.

Knives shrugged. "I asked the Plant. She sees everything that happens inside the ship... even if she doesn't understand most of it." He went to peer at the pillar, again showing some of the insatiable curiosity he'd shown in the desert.

"Hello. How may I help you today?" the computer said, with a slight crackle in its voice. "Oops... error... shutting down..." Blue sparks leaped from its screen, which flickered, guttered and then abruptly went dark again.

"Fascinating," Knives murmured.

"So what are you doing here?" Meryl said. "Did you finish communing, or whatever?"

"Miss Meryl," Lamia said reproachfully.

"I had a nice conversation with her," Knives said. "The Plant. She seems like a nice person."

 _He's so much like Vash..._

"I just wanted to make sure that the three of you were all right and hadn't gotten into any trouble."

 _Yeah, right. Wanted to check up on us, is all._

"So where are you going now?" Meryl inquired.

He looked surprised. "Well, to find the Genesis Machine, of course. She told me right where it is."

"It's -- here?" Meryl said in shock.

"At the other end of the ship," Knives said.

Meryl smiled brightly. "Well, then, we'll just come along! After all, we've come all this way together, right? We're companions! We should finish this together!"

Knives and Lamia were both giving her odd looks. She wondered if she'd laid it on a little thick.

"...Right," said Knives.

 

* * *

 

They left that room and followed Knives deeper and deeper into the ship. Closer to the cliff, it was like wandering around inside a badly crushed can of cheap tin. They climbed over massive folds in the metal, and Meryl wondered at the forces that could have buckled steel like so much wet paper. Some corridors were smashed flat and they had to detour. The place was a maze, yet Knives never faltered.

"And where are we going?" Meryl demanded, but then she answered her own question. "Let me guess. You don't know."

Knives glanced at her over his shoulder, his blue eyes pleading, and then looked away.

 _Oh yeah,_ Meryl thought. _The gloves are off now. God... we should run while we can..._

Her eyes darted behind them. Now, while Knives was distracted... now might be their only chance... she could carry Ellie if need be...

But then she looked at Lamia, striding along resolutely with the rifle clenched in both hands. Lamia would never come with her.

 _I should just leave the little sucker..._

 _What am I thinking? She's a kid, a deluded kid. I know all about Knives and I still keep falling under his spell once in a while..._

Lamia stopped walking and Meryl stumbled into her back. "Idiot! What do you think you're--"

"Meryl..." Lamia whispered.

Meryl looked ahead of them, and her stomach lurched. "Oh, my...."

They stood at the mouth of a long tunnel. Once perhaps it had been straight, but now it was twisted and buckled like the intestines of a giant metal worm. The sides, ceiling, floor were lined with strange capsules, each larger than a man, but Meryl barely glanced at them. She was staring at the floor.

Bones. A field of bones.

Human bones.

They lay drifted on the floor like windblown sand. Some were stacked neatly, others tumbled in crazy piles. Meryl saw insane sculptures: skulls stacked in a tidy little pyramid, thigh bones laid out end-to-end like pieces on a gameboard, pelvises delicately interwoven.

Meryl covered her mouth with her hands. Belatedly, she thought of Ellie and looked down, expecting the little girl to be terrified -- but she was looking around with great interest. She seemed to be handling the situation better than the adults.

"We -- have to go down there?" Lamia said, her voice shaking a little.

"You don't have to come," Knives said softly. "This will be hard for you."

"Hey, if you're going, we're going," Meryl snapped.

So they went, picking their way and trying not to step on anything. At one point Lamia stumbled and half-fell against a neat pile of jawbones, sending them cascading across the floor, clattering like gunfire on the metal. Meryl jumped and reached for her guns before she realized what had happened. Even Knives looked rattled.

"Kindly don't do that again," Meryl said.

As they walked deeper, Ellie started to pick up on the adults' somber mood and clung to Meryl, staying so close to her that Meryl kept almost tripping over her. They started passing intact capsules, most of them open and empty. Some contained intact skeletons.

 _I guess we didn't have any ancestors on this ship after all,_ Meryl thought. _They must have all died in the crash._

 _But... who did this to their bones? How horrible --_

"Oh, Meryl," Lamia said in a choked voice.

Meryl looked, and wished she hadn't. The first thing she saw was a woman's face, young and peaceful and serene, and she thought, _This one's still alive!_ but then she looked down and saw that the capsule was twisted and broken open just below the woman's chest. Her ribs gleamed whitely in the dim light. Her thighbones dangled towards the floor.

Meryl stumbled away, into Knives. For a moment she felt his thin body against hers as he caught and supported her, and she couldn't help thinking, _Is this what Vash...?_ Then she got herself under control and shook his hands off roughly.

"I know that being here distresses you," he said.

"Yes, being here distresses me! Can we just go wherever the hell we're going and get out of here, please?"

She pushed away from him and tried not to look at the dead woman in the capsule, but her gaze was drawn back with sick fascination. At least it didn't appear that the woman had suffered. Her eyes were closed, her face at peace, slightly upturned as if waiting to bask in the sun of a new world. Meryl felt sudden pity. This woman, younger than herself, had gone to sleep eagerly awaiting her first sight of another planet -- unaware that she would never wake up.

There was a brass plaque above the capsule, and Meryl, taking a step closer, saw that the woman's name was inscribed on it, BRENDA MERIAM JOHNSON, followed by a serial number: 10278539652-423.

 _Sleep well, Brenda,_ Meryl thought.

"Miss Meryl," Lamia called, her voice echoing in the tunnel. "Mr. Vash. Come look at this. These people are ... intact."

She had not said "alive."

Meryl dreaded to look this time, fearing a repeat of the half-skeletal woman -- her face so grotesquely serene, her body in ruins. But Lamia was right: here were some undamaged capsules with whole humans inside them. Meryl lightly touched the glass over their faces, clearing off the dust so she could see. The first capsules held a man and a woman, both young and attractive. Next was a little boy, perhaps four or five, and a girl even younger. Next to the girl was an empty capsule, and then one that held an old woman. The capsules beyond were all empty.

Lamia trailed her fingers on the glass of the empty capsule between the little girl and the old woman. "It looks like someone else is supposed to go here. How creepy."

"Don't be absurd," Meryl snapped. "They're just people who survived whatever happened to the others. Well, sort of survived."

Lamia gave her a withering glare. "But the others don't have bullet holes, Miss Meryl."

Bullet holes? Meryl looked closer. Lamia was right. The children each had a neat, round hole in their smooth little foreheads. So did the old woman. The young adults had been more badly injured -- the woman had dark bruising all over her neck, and the man had several bullet holes in his neck and chest. The edges of the wounds were soft and pale, showing a little clotted, dark blood.

Meryl shuddered in horror, imagining this family tied up in a line, as each family member was brought on their knees before their unknown executioner. She peered closer, looking at the name plaques above the capsules. They were so scratched and scarred that the names were almost obscured, but she could make out the letters if she squinted. The old woman was CYNTHIA JAMESON GREENE... the next capsule, the empty one, was labeled RONALD BYRON GREENE (her husband? Meryl wondered)... the little girl's capsule indicated that her name was PATRICIA JEWEL EMERSON...

"Look, the glass isn't broken," Lamia said, interrupting Meryl's perusal of the name plaques. "They must have been shot somewhere else and brought here."

Something crunched softly behind Meryl. "Iyaaaa--" She recoiled, half expecting some unknown serial killer to be standing behind her -- a man who would gather his victims' bones and stack them carefully in pretty patterns...

It was Knives. In the dimness, his pale eyes seemed to glow.

"Here," he said softly, touching the glass over the old woman's face.

"What's here?" Meryl demanded. "When are you going to stop playing your childish games?"

"It's here," Knives repeated. "Somewhere nearby." He seemed unaware of the girls' presence as he ran his fingers over the entire capsule, and then felt behind it. He moved off down the row of empty capsules, touching each one, feeling the wall. Meryl watched him nervously, but he didn't seem to be making much progress, so she looked back at the people in the capsules.

 _Are they truly dead? They look so alive. I wonder what would happen if we opened the doors and let them out. Would they be able to answer our questions?_

But no... they were dead, as dead as Brenda Johnson with her legs decayed down to the bones. The bullet holes could attest to that. Yet even in death, the old woman's face, like that of Brenda Johnson, was peaceful. Serene.

And suddenly ... familiar?

Meryl leaned closer until her nose was almost touching the glass case. Of course! This was... it had to be... the curly-haired woman in the photographs they'd seen in that odd little shrine upstairs. Only much, much older.

Rather excited, Meryl turned to the younger man and woman, staring at them for any resemblance to the old woman. Perhaps they were children ... or grandchildren? She didn't see any resemblance, no matter how hard she stared, and after looking at them for too long they started looking weirdly familiar, as if she'd seen them before, or someone who looked very much like them. She looked back at the old woman. Cynthia Greene, according to her name plaque. But... that was odd... hadn't the photograph upstairs had the name Nadia written on it?

Something Lamia had said floated up into Meryl's conscious mind: _They must have been shot somewhere else and brought here._

A sudden suspicion made Meryl squint more closely at the name plaque over the old woman's capsule. It was so scratched and scarred that she could barely read the original inscription... but was that an accident? She peered at the scratches, turning her head sideways, and suddenly realized that they were not random markings, but letters, inscribed over the original lettering with some sharp object.

The woman's real name.

Nadia... Amelia... Wolfwood?

It couldn't be.

Meryl's heart pounded and her mouth was dry. She took a deep breath and read the inscription over the capsule next to Nadia's... the empty one, by the little girl's. But she already thought she knew what she'd see...

The name inscribed on the empty capsule's nameplate was Nicholas Daniel Wolfwood.

Meryl realized that her mouth was open. She stared at the capsule, stunned, trying to recall Wolfwood ever mentioning his parents, his childhood. Had he? Even once?

"Could you move for a moment, please?" said Knives' voice behind her.

Too stunned to protest, her brain whirling madly, Meryl stepped away and let him move in and examine the capsules. "I know it's here," he said, sounding frustrated, and then, "Ahh..."

A loose part of the wall shifted under his hand, right behind Nadia's capsule. Knives tugged at it, then pulled, twisted. The metal gave way, revealing a narrow service crawlway, strung with bundles of wires.

And among the wires... something else...

Lamia craned around Knives' shoulder, trying to see, as he struggled to extricate the object. Meryl stayed a few steps back, drawn out of her reverie by curiosity. It was white -- that was all she could make out. Finally he pulled it loose and staggered, startled by the sudden weight (Meryl froze in terror), but managed to recover his grip and lower it very carefully to the metal floor. Meryl could tell by the strain in his arms that it was quite heavy.

It appeared to be a suitcase or briefcase. In the dim light, it gleamed dully; it appeared to be made of some kind of metal.

Meryl's breath caught in her throat, wondering what that metal could be intended to contain.

 _This is it,_ she thought, the mystery of Wolfwood's family briefly forgotten. _The Genesis Machine... it's in there._

 _Whatever it is, whatever it does, however it got here, Knives has it now._

 _God help us all._


	16. Dust in the Wind

Dust. Dust was the one constant of this cruel, ever-changing world. Dust on everything -- dust on countertops, dust on picture frames, dust on boots tracked across the floor, dust on the dry desert wind.

Angie ran a damp dishrag across the counters around the sink, turned it over and grimaced at the yellowish-red layer. She dusted every day, and still more dust seeped in, settling over everything like a choking yellow fog.

Sometimes she woke up and the knowledge that she would have to spend the rest of her life in this arid hell swept over her so forcefully that she couldn't breathe. It's easier for those who were born here, she thought, staring out the window at the hard, cloudless blue sky. They've never known anything else but this. How did the first colonists deal with this place? When they went to sleep dreaming of the Eden they were promised, then woke to this barren place of death, what made them get up and go on living?

She had survived by not allowing herself any hopes or dreams. She took what scraps of pleasure each day might bring her, and lived on those during the long, lean times.

Living in the present. Living with Lucas.

Angie looked over her shoulder at her son. He was curled up asleep on a blanket in the corner of the kitchen. She looked at him and felt the warm rush of pleasure spread over her. Peace. A sense that all was right...

... or wrong?

Angie frowned. Lucas... something wasn't right. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be... so young.

This isn't real, she thought, plunging her hands into the soapy dishwater. It's a dream.

No, not a dream. A memory. Or a dream of a memory.

I remember a day like this...

She fished another dish out of the water and wiped it clean and dry. There was not enough water to afford a wash _and_ a rinse.

Angie heard footsteps approaching the door. She put the dish away, and got another. She recognized those footsteps. Daniel. She'd had plenty of time to learn to recognize, and dread, his approach.

Daniel...

That was wrong, too. Daniel was dead.

 _But this is a memory..._

The door opened, and Angie knew what she'd do before she did it, knew what she'd say before she said it, knew what she'd turn around and see. Still, she went on drying the dish and put it away on the high shelf before she started to turn around.

"Well?" she said. "Did you get the other half of the Genesis Machi--"

She froze.

Daniel was not standing in the doorway, but leaning against it, as if it was the only thing holding him up. His large, rangy body drooped bonelessly. He was covered with blood.

"Daniel," Angie breathed. She had long ago ceased to have any feelings for Daniel Saverem, but something deep inside her twisted... the last remnant of the girl who had loved him. "Daniel... are you..."

Daniel looked down at his blood-covered hands, coming back to himself. "It's not mine... Angelina, I... I killed... No!" He clenched his hands into fists. "It wasn't me! I didn't pull the trigger! Not this time."

"You'll wake your son," Angie said, though Lucas slept on, peacefully.

Daniel shook his head. "I never meant to --" He looked at Angie, and his face was actually pleading. She'd never seen that look on his face before. "I didn't expect it to go this far."

"You're a hired killer, Daniel." She didn't know where the sudden surge of courage came from. Seeing Daniel helpless... maybe that was it. "Why does it surprise you when people get killed?"

Daniel shuddered, and suddenly he spun around and pointed. Over his shoulder, she could see the part of the Genesis Machine that the two of them possessed, leaning against the porch and gleaming in the sun. "Angie! Take that! Hide it! Don't let _them_ get it. It's killed too many already... If it falls into their hands, everyone will die."

"When has killing ever bothered you, Daniel?"

" _Listen_ to me! I'm not talking about a few people here. We're in this thing all the way up to our necks, Angelina. Do what I tell you." He turned his back.

"Where are you going?"

"I've been summoned. I can't disobey Him." His shoulders stiffened. "But I can do this, at least. Take the damn thing, Angie. I wish to God my father had never built it."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"I don't know! Hide it! You know places, I'm sure."

Angie wanted to argue, but his voice was fading, fading -- and then she blinked, and saw blue sky above her. It's too blue to be hell, she thought, so is this heaven, perhaps?

Then she sneezed, and choked on dust. A sharp pain stabbed her ribcage. No, she thought; dammit, I'm still alive.

After a bit of struggling, she extricated her arm. The only reason she hadn't been killed, she realized, was because they'd been so close to the shaft to the surface. When everything collapsed, a hole to the surface had opened up, so rather than getting 500 tons of rock on their heads, it was just the sloughed-off sides of the shaft. Still, she was lucky to be alive -- if lucky was really the right word.

 _The children -- oh, please --_

"Hold still. I'll help you. You shouldn't move too much."

That was Vash's voice. She felt a rapid surge of relief, followed quickly by fear -- and despair. _If we survived -- then Tony --_

"Where's Tony? Is he dead?" she asked.

"I don't know." Vash came into her field of vision. There was blood running down one side of his face, and he moved his right arm stiffly. "Are you all right?"

Though he seemed concerned about her, his face and manner were distant and cool, not warm as he had acted towards her earlier. _Because of what I've done,_ she thought. _I committed a crime as terrible as any of Tony's..._

"Vash.. the children..."

"I don't know," he said, his face tormented. "I haven't been able to find any of them."

After he helped her get out, they went in search of the children. They found total devastation. Parts of the complex were still intact, but most of it was utterly destroyed, including the hospital and other areas that Angie knew had been Kaite and Tony's labs.

"I-- I can't believe that tiny bomb could do this.... without destroying us..."

"Bombs like that are meant to destroy equipment, not people," Vash said. His voice was tired and defeated. "They set up a resonance that causes solid objects, like rock, to fall apart. It didn't hurt the tissues of your body, but it started a series of chain reactions that collapsed most of the mountain. It's designed to be used for sabotage without killing the user. But a bomb like that can kill plenty of people, trust me. That's what weapons do..."

And this one had. They found the children buried in rubble, their sleeping places collapsed on top of them. Vash and Angie had been close enough to the surface to survive, but the children, much deeper in the mountain, hadn't had a chance.

Angie found that she felt nothing. Nothing at all. She'd killed all the children under her care, and she couldn't even bring herself to weep, though Vash was crying as they uncovered the small bodies. There was nothing inside her but emptiness.

 _The legacy of Tony and Daniel's evil is mine now, I guess..._

They buried the children in a soft patch of sandy soil, where the late afternoon sunlight slanted down between reddish canyon walls. Angie sat near the gravesite and watched Vash kneeling over the graves, speaking softly to them.

"What are you telling them?" she asked.

"That we're sorry. That they deserved to have a chance to grow up and make their own way in life... and that it's not their fault that they didn't get the opportunity."

"Do you really believe they can hear you?"

Vash gave her a level look. He'd put on his yellow sunglasses, so she couldn't see his eyes -- and for just a moment, she was almost afraid of him. "I don't know, but if there is even the slightest chance... it's worth doing. Don't you think so?"

She sensed a bit of challenge in his words. "I didn't mean to cause their deaths. Truly... I would rather have died myself than brought harm to them. I intended to die."

If anything, his face grew colder. "I've always believed that suicide is a coward's answer to life's problems. It doesn't take strength to kill yourself, or to kill someone else. Finding solutions that don't hurt anyone... that is the only true strength."

"You're very self-righteous, don't you think?" Angie said. "Have you actually put those beliefs to the test? Have you actually stood face to face with someone like Tony and found a non-violent solution to stop him from hurting anyone else?"

Vash turned white, and Angie looked on in amazement -- she hadn't really meant to hurt him with those words, but he looked like he was about to faint.

"You're right," he said. "I've failed, too. So many people are dead because of me..." He looked down at his bare hands, blackened with a mixture of dirt from digging the graves, and blood from handling the children's bodies. "I can never wash these hands clean."

"No, I didn't mean--" Angie found herself softening, a little bit of sympathy climbing up over the edges of the emptiness inside her. "Look, I've done things... I'm not proud of, too. I'll tell you my story, Vash. But first I'd like to get away from here."

The flyer was half-buried in rubble, and it took the strength of Vash's mechanical arm to unearth it. Riding in the flyer, they circled the rubble, searching for Tony, but found no sign of him -- or Lucas's body, either, though they searched and searched. Her heart dead inside her, Angie also looked for the white suitcase, but didn't find it, and didn't say anything to Vash. She knew deep in her heart that there was no point. Tony was alive... and the Genesis Machine was with him. Half of it, anyway.

"Unless he was buried a lot deeper than we were, he's probably still alive," Vash said grimly, echoing her thoughts. "I'd lay odds that he's alive."

"Why do you suppose he didn't steal the flyer?"

"I don't know. Maybe he is buried after all. Dead. I -- I know it's wrong to wish someone dead, but..." He looked down at his hands.

In spite of herself, Angie asked, "Why do you hate Tony? What did he do to you?"

"Nothing. I think. He -- he reminds me of someone from my past."

"If I tell you my story," Angie said, "you'll have to tell me yours."

"I will. I promise."

The sun had set and night was spreading across the land. Despite the darkness, Vash wanted to search for the Bad Lads, to warn them of what they would find when they got back to their hideout. They flew back and forth across the desert, until Angie insisted that they abandon the search.

"This desert is huge. We could fly around out here for days and days. Besides, they're not good men, Vash. If Tony kills them when they get back... most of those men would deserve it."

Vash turned to her, and she recoiled from his face. His eyes... for a moment she almost thought his eyes were glowing, but it must have been a trick of the moons. Then the cold lines of his face softened into its usual gentleness, and he looked away.

"Angie, anyone could say the same thing about yourself ... or me. We're all the same under the skin. The petty things we all do in our lives fade into insignificance when you look at it from far away... a mountain or a hill, it's all the same from space..."

His voice trailed off and he crumpled bonelessly to the floor of the flyer. Luckily the machine was cruising along at a steady altitude; it bucked a little in updrafts, but Angie took over the controls.

"Vash?"

His face was very pale. _He must be hurt worse than he let on..._ Or maybe it was just shock, catching up to him eventually.

She flew for a time along the mountains, finally angling into a pass she knew of. Eventually there would be caves, and she hoped to find a place where she could tend to Vash's wounds and her own. A place they could rest and eat and regroup for what would lie ahead.

Her own mind was still closed to the reality of what had happened back at the Bad Lads' hideout. Soon it would hit her, and she would also fall to the ground... as she had fallen all those years ago, but not before she saved Hikari...

For a moment she was twelve years old again, standing in the wreckage of Steve and Karen's house. Their beautiful house... Angie remembered how she'd wished, seeing it from the outside, that she could live in a house like that. Built by hand, and built with love, a family home for a clearly close-knit and loving family. Now the house was in ruins, the family dead. Mostly dead....

Angie ran from room to burning room, searching for survivors. Outside, the sound of gunfire reminded her that she had little time to waste. If Tony caught her now, surely he'd kill her just as he'd killed Nadia and all her descendants, down through the years...

Angie screamed out Steve and Karen's names, even though she'd seen them, lying downstairs in a pool of blood. Surely someone had to be alive here... she wasn't throwing her life away for nothing, she wasn't going to die in an inferno in the desert on a godforsaken world in the middle of nowhere...

"Are you with them?"

Angie looked up and saw the little boy, standing at the top of the stairs and shivering in his ragged, bloodstained clothes, staring at her with wide blue-gray eyes. He was gripping a pistol in clumsy hands. Clearly he did not know how to use it, but he knew enough to point it at her head. Maybe he had seen his parents' killers hold their guns like that...

"Please." Angie held out her hands to him. "Come with me, quickly. They've got the house surrounded, but I know a way out."

"Who are you? Where's Sid and Rem?"

Angie didn't know how to tell him what had happened to his brother and sister. "Come on with me. Do you have anywhere to go? Any relatives? Friends of your parents?"

"I have an uncle," the boy faltered.

"Let's go to him. Come with me, quickly."

Come with me...

Angie's hands clenched on the controls of the flyer, almost sending the fragile machine spinning into the canyon walls closing on either side. _I should have left you there, Hikari,_ she thought. _Instead I delivered you into Daniel's hands... and an evil as bad as Tony's, only more insidious..._

She looked down at Vash, lying beside her foot. _Is it truly better to live than to die? Is there hope as long as we live, Hikari? Will I ever see you again?_

She steered the flyer into a narrow cleft in the rocks, and soon brought it down lightly at one of the spots that Tony maintained as supply depots on his excursions. She had to keep reminding herself that Tony had no way to follow them here. He was at least two days' travel away by any conventional method. The cave was perfectly safe.

Angie dragged Vash's limp body off the flyer, leaving a smear of blood, and then touched the button to activate the flyer's camo net. It shimmered softly, and then faded perfectly into the rocks behind it. Angie smiled. The wonders of lost technology. Before she had allowed it to fall into Tony's hands, she and Daniel had traveled halfway across the world on that thing, serving Daniel's master... and no one had ever found it, even when they walked right by.

Vash woke as she was building a fire. He went from total unconsciousness to total wakefulness instantaneously, sitting bolt upright with his left hand upraised. The hand snapped back and a gleaming gun barrel slid into its place, pointing straight at her head, in less time than it took to blink her eyes.

They sat like that for a moment.

"I'm sorry," Vash said, and lowered his gun, allowing it to fold away. "It's my reflexes. I wouldn't have hurt you."

Angie laughed shakily. "Lost technology," she said.

Vash shook his head, took off his yellow sunglasses and tucked them away in a pocket of the red coat. "You and I don't need to use that word. It isn't lost to us."

"It might as well be." Angie looked away. "Listen, Vash... About earlier, about what happened... about the children... I really am sorry, you know."

"Sorry doesn't give them their lives back."

"I know." She stared into the flames. "Are you hurt bad?"

"I'll live. Yourself?"

"I'll live."

Angie prepared a meager dinner that neither of them touched. Vash tended to his injuries, while she bandaged her small cuts, smeared ointment on her bruises.

 _Together,_ she thought, _but a world apart._

"You said that you'd tell me about yourself," Vash said.

"Ditto."

He smiled a little. His smile was very sweet, very sad. "Who should go first?"

"I will," Angie said, surprising herself. "It's been so long... since I've talked about myself."

She clasped her hands in front of her and stared into the fire for a long time before she began.

"I was eight years old when we left Earth."

She stopped and looked at him. "Do you know what Earth is?"

Vash nodded. "I've never seen it... only holograms on the ships."

"Were you born on the ships?" Angie asked in surprise.

He pointed a finger at her, and for a moment his grin was sly and teasing. "You go first, remember?"

She found herself returning the smile. "Yes... you're right. Eight years old... I barely remember it. I haven't thought of it in so long. I used to dream of leaving this hell of a world, but now this is the only home I know. I think the Earth I imagine exists only in my memories. My name, on Earth, was Angelina Davis."

She stopped again, until Vash prompted her. "How is it that you look so young?" he asked. "That all happened a long time ago."

Angie smiled faintly at him. "There is no magic there. My ship crashed into the mountains, far from the others. It was badly damaged, and the equipment that was supposed to initiate the wakeup procedure was destroyed. Most of the capsules were destroyed as well.

"Tony Blanchard was the captain of that ship. His capsule's wakeup procedure was initialized at the time the first malfunction was detected -- but the damage prevented it from completing the procedure. He was aware, but his body remained in coldsleep. He spent the years like that, unable to summon help, unable to sleep or to dream."

Vash listened quietly.

"The only thing keeping him halfway sane was his memory of the woman he loved, Nadia, who had also been on that ship, and the hope that she'd survived the crash. Unknown to him, she had -- but she did not sleep his long sleep. The capsules are programmed to start waking up their inhabitants if the life support fails. Nadia's capsule was intact enough that when it finally sprung a leak, years later, it started the process that brought her out of deep sleep. She searched the wreckage for other survivors, and found a few, including a boy named Alex Saverem, the son of an old friend of hers named Rem. But she never found me and Tony... we were in a different part of the ship."

Angie paused to eat a bite, mechanically, without seeming to taste it. Then she went on.

"I learned all this later, from Daniel, Alex's son. Most of the other crash survivors died on the difficult trek to find help. Only Nadia and the boy made it to a city. The years went by and she raised the boy as her own. Nadia believed Tony was dead and she put her life back together as best she could. She fell in love, and had a son, although his father died before the child was born. I don't know too much about that. A lot of people died young, back in those days. Her son was named Tony; that's all I really know about him.

"Eventually Alex had two children as well, Karen and Daniel. The two families had stayed in touch, and Karen married Nadia's grandson Steve. Are you with me so far?"

"Yes," Vash breathed, thinking, _More descendants of Rem? Is that possible?_

"Then the autowakeup procedure in Tony's capsule finally initiated, brought about by the decaying life support, as in Nadia's. He woke up, and like Nadia, he searched for survivors, and found only me."

Angie turned her face away.

"I wish he'd left me there. Better... far better... to have died in the desert, never knowing... than to wake in hell, with only a madman to help me.

"Still, we survived. Somehow we survived, and Tony, finding Nadia's capsule empty, searched across this planet for her. I was dragged along, helpless. The things Tony did to me on that journey... I will never tell anyone.

"Finally he found Nadia, only to find her an old woman, living with Steve and Karen and their kids. He realized that seventy years now separated them. The dream that had sustained him through his long isolation could never be. Worse, she had cheated on him, as he saw it -- giving birth to Steve's father by another man.

"Tony..." Angie clenched her fists in the fabric of her skirt. "Tony hired gunmen to kill them all, Nadia and all her descendants that he said should never have been born. That's when I left him. I was twelve."

She bowed her head.

"The rest... it doesn't matter now. It's over... and buried with the dead, as it should be."

There was a long silence. Finally Vash said, quietly, "What about Alex?"

"Alex?"

"Alex Saverem," Vash said. "Tony wants him because of the Genesis Machine, isn't that right?"

Angie's head snapped up. "How do you know about that?"

"Lega --Tony mentioned it."

Angie swallowed. "This is all because of me. Tony never knew about Alex, never would have known that Alex was still alive, if I hadn't told him."

"You...?"

"I did it to save... to save the life of someone I love," she retorted. "And I'd do it again, and again, if I had to. But one thing, at least, I did manage to do right. I hid the Genesis Machine from Tony. I don't think he'll ever find it, even though it's right under his nose."

" _You_ had it?"

"Half of it. Actually, it was Daniel's. He got it from his father, long ago, before they had their falling out. Daniel was the one who told me about it."

"What does it do?"

"I have no idea. Alex Saverem built it... that's all I know. And he entrusted it to his children for safekeeping. Half to Karen, half to Daniel."

"What happened to Karen's half?"

"Tony has it now. That white suitcase he was carrying."

Vash gave her a look of shock.

"If he's still alive, that is. If not, then it's buried with him, and good riddance. And the other half, Daniel's half, is hidden," Angie said. "And I won't tell you where. It's not safe. It'd be better if the knowledge dies with me, when I die."

"It's that dangerous?"

"Daniel thought so. It was so dangerous even _he_ didn't want to use it for its intended purpose. Whatever that might be. He just used it as a weapon of minor destruction."

Vash buried his face in his hands. Angie sat in silence, her hands clasped in her lap. It felt good to have finally got that off her chest. So long since she'd had anyone to talk to... anyone who understood, or even knew what she was talking about when she mentioned the world they'd left behind...

"I had hoped..." Vash began, his voice muffled.

Angie looked up at him.

"I'd hoped... that in Rem's descendants, I could find... I don't know. Something I lost long ago. Innocence. Forgiveness. A second chance. Absolution for the mistakes of my past..."

"Who was Nadia's friend Rem to you?" Angie asked quietly.

So he told her. Everything.

Angie listened, while the fire burned down to ashes and the stars wheeled overhead in the sky.

"You're... a Plant? I didn't know that was possible."

"I -- think that it's a stage every Plant goes through. Sort of an ambulatory phase before they settle down to their existence... outside of time, as Brad called it."

"A larva?" She laughed at the mental image, and Vash laughed with her. But Angie sobered. "So if I understand you right, you've gone on in this phase a lot longer than most Plants do."

"I have. For most of us, it's over quickly. Most Plants yearn for the peace and security of the blue light. But for me..." He hesitated. "I met Rem."

Angie felt sympathy well up inside her again. "Now I understand why you reacted the way you did... when I told you about Daniel and the Genesis Machine. In a sense, Rem is your mother."

"Mother, big sister... I don't know if there are any human words to express it. The closest relationship to another person that I've ever experienced, besides the connection I have with Knives ... which is different. And now you've told me that her descendants have wrought as much evil on this world as my brother has.... That's hard to take, Angie."

"Not all of them," Angie said quickly.

Vash looked at her.

"Hikari is -- I mean, _was_ a good person. In a sense, I suppose the two of you would be brothers, since he's one of the last descendants of your foster mother Rem. I wish you'd gotten a chance to meet him."

"I would have liked that," Vash said quietly.

Angie smiled, thinking of Hikari and his solemn blue-gray eyes. Vash would have liked him, she was sure. Then she sobered. "I hate to bring up bad images again, but you haven't told me what it is about Tony that frightens you so. From what you've said, you didn't know him from the ships."

"No. I didn't. And I still don't know... how to explain it. He seems almost to be... I don't know. A reincarnation of the one person that I --" He hesitated, clenching his hands into fists. "The one person that I killed with my own hands. He answered to that name. But he's _not_ that man. That man is dead."

"Vash..." Angie looked down at her hands in her lap. "When Tony... when... you know..."

"Yes?"

"When he... when he killed... you know who. I felt like... I couldn't move. Even though I tried. I was frozen in place. Did you feel the same thing?"

Vash nodded, and looked slightly surprised. "Then you've never felt that before?"

"No. What was it?"

"The man that Tony made me think of... He had the power to control people's bodies, like puppets. Tony seems to have that same power."

Angie gazed at him, and something that Daniel had once said about his master ran through her head. Daniel had been shaken and afraid, after watching his boss kill someone who'd displeased him. _He just looked at the guy, and suddenly he folded up, like he was made out of paper. And I couldn't move..._

"Angie?"

"Nothing." _Could this guy Vash is talking about... be the same guy Daniel worked for? But I KNOW that Daniel didn't work for Tony..._

"It's getting late," Vash said, looking up at the stars.

Angie nodded. "I guess we'd better sleep. We have a big day ahead of us... We should travel on to November City and find Alex Saverem. Before Tony does."

"True." Vash rolled up in his coat, his dinner untouched. "Good night, Angie."

"Good night."

She banked the fire and settled down, gazing into the ash-covered coals. So many answers tonight... and so many mysteries.

 _Tony is alive. I know it. He's too much of a bastard to die. So where was he, during all those years I was with Daniel? Could he have worked for Daniel's boss, that Legato guy?_

 _He did seem different when I met him again in the desert, but I thought it was because of all the years that had passed. A guy as unstable as Tony... he'd surely change over the years._

 _This Legato couldn't possibly have some way to transfer his essence... or whatever... could he?_

She had not seen Daniel die, but she had seen what was left of his body, much later -- horribly contorted and mangled. Legato had done that. And Lucas's cruel death...

There in the darkness, her unshed tears finally began to come.

 _I know I deserve it, but I still don't want to die that way..._


	17. Frozen

"Home sweet home," Kaite said.

Millie jumped at his words, startled out of a brooding funk. She couldn't stop thinking about Ellie, desperately wondering where her daughter was now, if she'd been found by Vash or some kind person, or if she was wandering the streets of March City, lost, alone, starving...

"What?"

"Home." Kaite pointed over the low windshield of their beat-up Jeep. "Just over the next ridge."

"Goodie for you," Millie muttered, folding her arms and slouching lower into her seat. Her usual good nature was at an all-time low.

They were riding in Kaite's Jeep at the head of a convoy of three covered trucks, each one loaded with stolen money and goods. Millie had to admit that it had been a well-planned attack. During the distraction, which she gathered had been caused by a gang member called "Tony," three separate groups of outlaws had entered the city and made for their individual targets. All got out free and clear and rendezvoused outside the city. They waited for Tony until it started getting light and Kaite announced that they had to take off. Tony might have been captured, or he might have left without them; in any case, every man knew the risk when he signed on, and they couldn't afford to go back for anyone.

Millie, who had been listening from her prison inside one of the trucks, had been shocked at this. Kaite? He'd seemed like such a nice kid. Well, she thought, grimly struggling with her bonds, once a bad apple, always a bad apple.

Over the next few days she had plenty of opportunity to curse the day she'd ever laid eyes on Kaite. Nothing she said would convince him to let her go -- tears, threats, screaming, begging, even descriptions of her daughter didn't sway him.

"I can't let you go," he said to her softly, one night when she'd started speculating on everything that could have happened to Ellie and driven herself almost to hysteria. "They'd kill me, don't you understand? It takes a hard man to keep these men in line. They're looking for some sign of weakness, and if they see it, they'll be like sand sharks on a sick lizard. You're lucky I didn't let them kill you."

"You're selfish! Completely selfish! You're afraid to do anything brave or noble. What happened to the little boy who risked his life to save those people on the sand steamer?"

"He grew up," Kaite said shortly, and looked away.

Millie made several attempts to escape, but one of the outlaws always noticed her trying to sneak out of the campsite and dragged her back to Kaite, kicking and screaming. Finally he started keeping one of her wrists tied by a short length of rope to the frame of his Jeep.

At least the outlaws had pretty much left her alone. Kaite had let them know in no uncertain terms that Millie was his woman -- those were his exact words. Millie proceeded to scream at him for a half hour or so, until she went hoarse, and then retreated into a cold silence for as long as possible.

She wished that she could hate him, but she seemed unable to do so. She'd never been good at that. She didn't even hate Knives -- she was mad at him, sure, but deep down she had the conviction that if someone could just reason with Knives, make him see the harm he'd caused, he'd be able to make amends for the awful things he'd done. And Kaite was far less, well, _evil_ than Knives and Legato had been. __

Meryl would say I'm a fool, Millie thought, gazing at Kaite's craggy profile as the desert whipped by behind him. _She'd say I'm an empty-headed Pollyanna. I tried to tell her once that I believe there's good in everyone, even Knives, and she got so mad at me that she was very difficult to live with for the next couple of days._

Meryl would never get herself into a situation like this. Meryl always knows what to do.

I wonder what Meryl is doing now? Probably doing paperwork behind some nice big desk in a clean office somewhere.

Millie sighed and folded her hands in her lap, tugging fretfully at the rope around her wrist. She'd spent a couple of hours in the jolting Jeep trying to saw through it on a sharp edge of metal sticking out from under the seat, until Kaite noticed what she was doing and asked if she'd rather have her hands handcuffed to her ankles.

She hated feeling helpless. Hated it! Hated it!

Suddenly Kaite gave a sharp intake of breath. Millie looked at him, puzzled. He was staring at the horizon. Confused, she looked where he was looking.

All she saw was mountains. Millie had long since given up on trying to figure out where they were.

"That's not right..." Kaite whispered.

The undertone of fear in his voice drew Millie's attention. "What's wrong?" __

"The mountains... Shit!" He jerked the steering wheel of the Jeep. In his distraction, he'd almost driven into a ravine. "It doesn't look right. It doesn't look right!"

Millie felt a cold chill. "What do you mean?"

Kaite ignored her and pulled to a stop, waiting for the trucks to catch up with the Jeep. The driver of the truck behind him hopped out and approached the Jeep. Kaite jumped down too and went to meet the outlaw halfway.

Frustrated, Millie tugged at her bonds, but the knots held firm. She'd never be able to get free before Kaite got back -- and even if she did, where would she go? All she could manage to do was die of thirst in the desert. She sighed and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. Snatches of the conversation carried to her.

"--noticed it too, huh?"

"What's goin' on, boss? We couldn't have come too far south, could we? Think those are the Twin Sister Peaks?"

"No. The Sisters are much lower. And besides, that's Gunsight Mountain there, all right."

The outlaw's answer was too low for Millie to make out, though now her curiosity was fully aroused. When Kaite came back to the Jeep, she looked at him. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," Kaite said shortly, putting the vehicle in gear.

"If we're about to start fighting for our lives, I'd like my stungun back."

Kaite grinned slightly. "There won't be any fighting. At least, I doubt it. There's no way any human could have done what we see here. I don't know how to explain it, though."

"What?" Millie demanded.

Kaite steered with one big hand, easily controlling the Jeep as it bounced over the rough ground, while he pointed with the other. "See that big peak there, with the notch in it? We call that Gunsight Mountain. It's a landmark. You can see it from a long way off, and we've been steering by it all day. As you come around Gunsight, you should be able to see a very pointed peak -- where we live. But ... look at it. The shape of the mountain is all off. It looks too rounded. And there should be some spires of rock near the top that are simply not there."

Millie looked. It looked just like a mountain to her. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Positive," Kaite said. His brow was creased with a frown. "It could be that there was an earthquake or an avalanche or something while we were gone. I hope the kids are all right."

 _"Kids?"_ Millie looked at him in shock. "What kids?"

Kaite sighed and waved a hand. "I'll explain later."

"Explain later, explain later. Everything is always 'explain later.' I want an explanation now. If you're going to drag me out here against my will, the least you could do is --"

"You certainly talk a lot," Kaite said.

"Hmmph!" Millie did her best Meryl snort and crossed her arms, looking off at the scenery.

All afternoon they drew nearer to the mountain. The suns were starting to get low in the sky when they finally approached a great pile of rubble. Kaite halted the Jeep, and just sat there, staring. The engine rumbled softly. Behind them, Millie heard the trucks approach, and stop.

"What the hell," Kaite said quietly.

He shut off the Jeep and climbed out. Millie got out on her side as well, though she couldn't go very far without being untied.

"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked him. Kaite was standing with one hand on the Jeep's hood, and she saw to her shock and dismay that the hand was trembling.

"This -- this should be..." He looked up at the rubble. As far as Millie could see, the mountainside was broken and jumbled, as if by some massive catastrophe. "There should be a canyon here, and halfway up, our secret entrance... but it's all gone... it's gone..."

Millie had a sudden, frightening image of Augusta, totally destroyed. _But it's not possible ... it couldn't be... is Knives here?_

She fought an overwhelming urge to run away.

The other bandits were drifting forward from the trucks, talking amongst themselves in low, urgent voices. They were clustered in little groups, as if to draw strength from each other. The sight of so many hardened killers in such a state of confusion and fear almost unhinged Millie.

 _What happened here?_

"You've taken your time," said a voice from above them.

The bandits' voices fell silent. Everyone looked up.

A man stood on top of the jumbled boulders, silhouetted against the sky. He was slim and wiry, lean and graceful as a cat. A shiny black bodysuit, covered with odd wires and tubes, covered his body from the neck down. Millie couldn't see his face -- the sky was too bright, and shadows concealed his features and eyes.

In his arms, he carried a bundle wrapped in a blanket. A white suitcase leaned against one of his feet.

"Tony!" Kaite said. He sounded relieved. "We wondered what kept you. Do you have any idea what happened here?"

"I know exactly what happened here," Tony said in that same calm, quiet, uninflected voice.

 _I've heard that voice before._ Millie strained, trying to figure out where. Had she met this man before?

"Thank goodness," Kaite said. "Are the kids all right? Is Angie?"

"Angie is the one who did this," Tony said. Though his voice was quiet, somehow his words carried to his listeners with perfect clarity. That was familiar too. Millie knew she'd met someone who spoke like that...

Then she knew. And her heart turned to ice.

Legato.

No. It couldn't be. She'd seen him die. Damn it, she'd seen him die!

"Angie? What are you talking about? How could Angie possibly do something like this? And even if she could, she wouldn't --"

"Kaite." Tony's quiet voice stopped Kaite in midsentence. "Welcome to your first lesson in human nature. Human beings are infinitely petty, infinitely unpredictable and erratic. I have learned never to be surprised by their actions."

He stooped and placed the wrapped bundle carefully on the boulder. Then he leaped gracefully down the pile of rocks, reaching the ground in a few fluid bounds.

Millie felt a flood of relief that weakened her legs, leaving her shaky. It wasn't Legato. This man was a stranger. He had sharp features, an ageless face that could be anywhere between 30 and 60, and short-cropped, ginger-colored hair. His face was dirty and a bruise under his left eye was starting to fade to yellow and purple.

Kaite tensed slightly, and Millie realized that he did not like or trust this man called Tony. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I want some answers."

"Answers? I need give you no answers." Tony smiled, and his strange, golden eyes gleamed. "You've been very useful to me, Kaite. You have given me a place to stay and aid in obtaining necessary equipment from the ship. However, I do not need you any more. My lord's resurrection is at hand, and all I need from you is a vehicle." He pointed at the Jeep. "That one will do nicely."

Millie's heart was pounding faster and faster. It was like Legato all over again. _Who is this guy? What's happening?_

Kaite snorted, and drew a gun. "You're off your nut, Tony. Fact is, you've never really been _on_ it, but at least you usually seem to hold it together pretty well, and that's all I ask from any of my men. I'll remind you, just once, that you work for me, not the other way around."

Tony smiled. It was a horrible smile, a smile that made Millie think of crawling slimy things, of long-dead corpses floating to the surface of fetid, hidden swamps.

"No," he said softly. "I serve one only. That One is not you."

Kaite gave a sudden cry of mingled pain and anger, and dropped his gun as if it had bitten him. "Fuck! It's hot!"

Tony continued to smile.

"What are you standing there for!" Kaite yelled at his men. "This man is dangerous! Don't let him go anywhere!"

The bandits looked at each other and then drew various weapons. "Okay, you heard the boss," one of them said. "Just stay right there, and everything'll be fine --"

He broke off with a strangled, horrible cry.

What happened next was a scene that Millie would see in her nightmares for years. She wanted to look away, wanted to run, wanted to collapse and give in to helpless, screaming panic -- but she couldn't do any of those things, because she couldn't move a muscle.

The bandits turned inside out. Their skin peeled back, their bones cracked and twisted, their bodies split down the middle -- and the worst part was that they were awake and aware for most of the process -- even after they could no longer scream, their bodies still twitched as they struggled. Millie finally managed to turn her eyes away from the horrific sight, but she couldn't close her ears to the awful cracking, popping sounds.

Through it all, Tony merely smiled.

Kaite still seemed to be free. He was down on his knees, going for his gun. As soon as his fingers closed on it, though, he let go with a gasped curse. Then he reached for it again and forced his hand to curl around the grip. Teeth gritted, he raised the gun. Millie stared. She could smell the scorched flesh of his hand, fancied she could see smoke rising from his fingers. He gripped his wrist with the other hand, trying to steady the trembling gun.

"Go ahead," Tony said quietly. "Fire."

Blood ran down Kaite's scarred chin. Trying to control his pain, he had bitten through his lower lip. Still, he managed to steady the gun, and squeezed off several quick shots. The harsh popping of the gun made Millie flinch, each gunshot flaying her nerves like a whipcrack.

Tony did not move, and the smile on his face never faltered. He hesitated for a moment, then raised a hand and picked something out of the air in front of his face. He opened his hand and the bullets clattered to the ground at his feet.

Kaite moaned something under his breath and let the gun fall. He went to his knees, gripping his burned hand.

Millie felt her head twist until she was looking straight into Tony's emotionless, golden eyes. He started walking toward her. In spite of the outside control that held her like a giant fist, she was trembling uncontrollably.

"I know you," Tony said, and touched the tips of his fingers to her cheek. The touch seemed to burn like a brand across her skin, a horrid brand that she felt she would never be able to wash away.

Millie couldn't speak, but she wasn't sorry, because she knew that if she could, she'd start screaming and she wouldn't be able to stop.

"Kneel," Tony said, and Millie knelt helplessly. He placed his hand on top of her head. "All humans are pathetic worms, and all women are whores and cannot be trusted," he said, speaking the words like a mantra. "I could kill you as easily as this," and he tugged on one of her hairs. The small, sharp pain almost unhinged her. She felt as if she was about to lose her mind from sheer terror.

"But I have learned," Tony said quietly. "I have learned much about the ways of fear and pain and humiliation." Millie felt her head tilt back. No, she thought, no -- she would rather be twisted and broken like the bandits than look into his eyes. If she'd been able, she would have collapsed, sobbing. But all she could do was meet his bottomless golden gaze.

"You must understand that you are entirely helpless, entirely within my power," Tony said. "Do you understand?"

Millie suddenly had enough control of herself to nod, and nod she did, as vigorously as possible. She couldn't stop herself, any more than she could stop the tears from filling her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. At that moment, she learned that she had it within herself to hate. She hated Tony for doing this to her, but she hated herself, she despised herself, for being weak enough to let him do it to her. She wasn't even able to fight as Kaite had fought. All she could do was nod helplessly, and wish to be dead, wish that this could all be over -- at the same time, and just as fervently, as she begged inwardly, _Don't kill me, please don't kill me, please let me see my daughter again..._

For the first time, Tony's voice contained a trace of emotion -- wonder, and surprise. "This is better than death," he said.

He picked up Millie's limp hand, and the rope shivered and fell away from her wrist. She put up no resistance. She was no longer certain if he was still controlling her, or if she was paralyzed with her own fear and self-hatred. She had been bitterly angry at Kaite for abducting her, but nothing Kaite had done to her could remotely compare with this.

Tony bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. There was no love or affection in that kiss, no lust, no hunger. It was about power, pure and simple. Power and control. She tasted dirt and smoke on his lips.

"Live with this," he said, so quietly she could barely hear him, his breath brushing her ear.

He straightened, and, leaving her there, climbed back up the rocks. His dark figure shimmered, blurred by the tears in her eyes, but even through her fear, shock, and horror, some part of her noticed that he was no longer as graceful as he had been. His shoulders were stooped as if with great weariness, and sometimes he stumbled as he climbed the rocks.

He picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle, slinging it over his shoulder, and the suitcase in the other hand. Thus encumbered, he climbed down more slowly than before.

When he reached the ground, Millie saw that part of the blanket had slipped free, and she could now see what it was covering. She was beyond shock -- she just stared dully at the face of a dead child, a boy of perhaps nine or ten. He looked like he'd been dead for some time. His face was puffy and bluish-gray, the lips cracked, the eyes sunken.

Tony laid the boy's body in the backseat of the Jeep, and set the white case next to it. He smiled that horrid smile at Millie.

"Perhaps we shall meet again one day," he said. "There is a bond between us now. But perhaps not, since you'll be dead soon, along with everyone else."

He started the Jeep, and turned around in a shower of gravel. The tires crunched over what was left of the bandits' bodies.

Millie slumped bonelessly to the ground. She did not pass out, but she lay, dazed, for a long time. Finally the numbness began to fade, and then the shakes came, and then the tears.

When she'd cried herself out, she rolled over onto her back and looked up at the stars. They looked more beautiful than she could ever have imagined, and she was so emotionally wrung out that it took her a few minutes to realize why.

 _It's because I never thought I'd see stars again. Or anything._

I'm alive.

The thought should have made her happy, but instead she just felt dirty.

"Millie?" a harsh voice grated nearby. "You okay?"

Millie raised her head and saw, in the moonlight, Kaite kneeling nearby, fixing an improvised bandage around his right hand, using his teeth to hold the bandage while he pulled it taut.

"I'm okay," she said. Her voice only shook a little, and she wondered if she said it often enough, if that would make it true. "What about you?"

"I'll live."

Millie wanted to say something else -- something like, "You were very brave," or "You did everything you could have done." But she could tell from the look on his face that he felt the same way about his own survival that she felt about hers, and she didn't say anything.

They both sat still for a few minutes, and then Kaite got up and went over to the bodies. Millie dragged herself to her feet. Her body ached as if she'd been beaten soundly. "Should we bury them?" she asked. Her voice sounded too loud in the stillness of the desert night.

Kaite shook his shaggy head. "We don't have anything to dig with, and it would take too long... I'd better leave soon if I'm going to catch that bastard."

Millie stared at him.

"You're going after him?"

"What else can I do?"

"Well -- well -- how about going the other way! As fast as possible!"

"No," Kaite said. "The Bad Lads took me in, not just once but twice -- the first time when I was just a scrawny little kid, the second time after I betrayed them and then came crawling back, starving, on my hands and knees. I owe them this much. Besides... it's personal. That guy claimed to be my friend. I won't stop until I find him and hurt him as much as he's hurt me."

Millie clenched her hands into fists. "You won't even get close to him! He'll just kill you like... like he killed everybody else."

"There has to be a way." Moonlight cast Kaite's face into deep shadow, but Millie could see the stubborn set of his jaw. "I intend to find it."

He turned and started towards the trucks, then looked back at her. "Millie... I'm sorry I got you into this. If I'd known it would turn out like this, hell, I would have let you go. Really, I would have. You're welcome to take one of the trucks and go back to your daughter, if that's what you want to do."

It was what she wanted, with all her heart. But then what, she wondered. Suppose she somehow found her way back to March City, and didn't become lost and die in the desert. Suppose she managed to find Vash and Ellie. What then? Somewhere, a man was wandering with all of Legato's powers and all of Legato's venom towards humanity. A man who spoke of resurrecting his master... and Millie suspected who he might mean.

 _If we follow Tony -- we might find Knives._

And then what? What can I accomplish, except to get myself killed?

Maybe I can somehow find him, and then find Vash again...

There was no possible chance that it would work. None. If she went with Kaite, she would die. She was sure of it.

 _And if I go back to March City, everyone will die._

She was equally sure of that.

While she stood dithering, Kaite had walked back to the nearest truck and started throwing bags of gold and money out the back, heedlessly scattering the dead gang's haul to the desert winds.

"Wait," Millie said.

Her voice was so low she could barely hear herself. "Wait," she managed louder.

Kaite looked over at her. "Yeah?"

"I'll come with you."

Millie walked towards him, and with every step she took, she felt better about herself, a little more healed in the part of her soul that Tony had violated.

"What about your daughter?" Kaite said.

Millie closed her eyes in pain and regret, and when she opened them, he was still there, and closer, as she took another step, then another.

"I think this is the best thing I can do to take care of her," she said, and realized, as she spoke, that it was true.

 _Because if I don't do whatever I can to help, this entire world will die._

Kaite looked at her, then shrugged. "It's up to you. Give me a hand here."

"What are you doing?" Millie asked, climbing up in the back of the truck.

"Getting rid of weight. Our fuel will last longer."

"Are you going to follow the Jeep's tracks?"

Kaite shook his head. "No. The Jeep can go places the truck can't, and it can travel faster too. I'm going to try to head Tony off. I think I know where he's going."

"Where?"

"There's a piece of lost technology out in the desert. A ship capable of traveling between worlds. Tony and I have been bringing tools and technology back here from the ship. Well... we were." A shadow of pain crossed his face, vanishing quickly. "I don't know what his eventual aim is, but I would imagine he'll go back there at some point. I intend to be ready for him when he gets there."

"Who is this Tony guy?" Millie said. "How well do you know him?"

Kaite shrugged, throwing a pile of gold bars onto the sand. "He just showed up one day, wandered out of the desert, delirious and starving. BDN saw something in him... didn't kill him, but instead took him in. His hunch paid off. Tony was a genius with technology. A lot of that neon stuff they had, the vehicles and weapons, was designed or built by Tony. He taught me a lot of what I know... pretty much everything my dad didn't show me, Tony did."

He heaved one last bag of doubledollars out the back of the truck, and leaped down, offering Millie an elbow to steady herself as she climbed down. She helped him tie down the canvas top of the truck, which was difficult with his injured hand.

"But he was always a cipher," Kaite said, clambering up into the driver's seat of the truck. Millie got in on the passenger's side. "He'd disappear for months at a time. No one knows where he went. I realize now that a lot of those trips were to the ship, but not all of them. After I left and came back, Tony realized that I was skilled with technology, and I started helping him build things in his lab. Sometimes I'd go with him to the ship and help him bring stuff back. We got all kinds of things. Medical technology that can cure almost anything. Better engines... I don't know if you noticed, but that Jeep, and these trucks too, are partly powered by the suns. The engine helps, but it doesn't do most of the work. Uses a lot less gas than most of the engines you see around. Things like that."

He started the engine. Millie tilted her head, listening -- it was a lot quieter than other engines, now that she thought about it.

Kaite didn't put it in gear immediately, though. He stared out the windshield at the dark rocks. Suddenly he turned to Millie. "Have you ever seen one of those circuses with the wild animal acts? The ones that have, I don't know, a baby sandworm on a leash. Does some tricks for the audience. They eat it up."

"Uh, yes, I have," Millie said, startled by the change of subject.

"Last year, there was a big flap in Mai City. I don't know if you heard about it. One of those circuses had a quote-unquote tame sandworm get loose. It killed three people and destroyed a lot of property before the local sheriff shot it in a vital place.

"Tony's like that sandworm. He seemed tame, but there's also always been something under the surface, something you could never touch or trust. BDN swore he was perfectly trustworthy, but at the same time, he never really let Tony do anything without BDN having a hand in it. I've gotten lax. I have so many things to juggle, trying to hold onto my control, that I didn't have time to keep as close an eye on Tony as I should have.

"Millie, you can go back. Go back to your little girl. This is my hunt, and I expect it will end in my death, but at least I won't take you with me."

Millie shook her head. "No. I can't. I agree with you, I think we're going to die... but I don't have any choice but to try. And there are some things about Tony that I'd better tell you, if we're going to have to face him."

"Talk while we drive?"

Millie nodded. Kaite put the truck in gear, and pulled slowly around in a circle. They drove off under the silver light of the moons, leaving the former hideout of the Bad Lads to the wind, the rocks, and the restless dead.


	18. Child of Rem

It took Vash and Angie several days to make it to November City. The reason was simple. They got lost.

"I don't BELIEVE you!" Angie ranted, after they stopped to ask directions at yet another roadside fruit stand. "Mister 'I've been traveling through the desert since before your parents were born' indeed!"

"Hey, I haven't noticed you pointing out helpful landmarks either. You think I've been traveling through the desert with a PLAN? I just wander where my travels take me. I haven't had very much experience at finding specific places."

"You are such a complete dork," Angie sighed, leaning on the railing of the flyer. The fruit stand owner had given them directions and they were now sailing through open desert, possibly in the wrong direction.

"Stop blaming me! I went mostly on public transportation. Buses. Sand steamers. Hitchiking. That sort of thing."

Angie laid her head down on her folded arms, peering at him. "You've been doing this for close to a hundred and thirty years?"

"It's a real drag, isn't it."

"Yeah," Angie agreed, watching the horizon sweep slowly past.

Vash watched her staring at the desert, and stayed quiet. He still felt dazed with shock over the childrens' death. He had not once seen Angie cry, although sometimes her eyes were red when she looked at him.

 _How could she do such a thing? I -- I can't help liking her, even knowing what she's done. Is that wrong, Rem?_

Angie sighed. "Well, we may as well have lunch. I bought a few things at the last place we stopped." She brought out a package wrapped in brown paper. "Let's see, I've got sandwiches, fruit... donuts for dessert..."

"Donuts?" Vash perked up immediately.

"Yeah. There was a little bakery at that last town... these looked good, and -- _Hey! Give those back, you jerk!"_

"Mmmmph?" Vash mumbled through a mouthful of donuts. Ahhh... this was bliss. He hadn't even _thought_ of donuts in ... days. Maybe months. Ever since Knives' disappearance.

"Well, if I'd had any idea you liked them so much, I would have bought a few more. Save at least one for me, would you?"

"Mmmm...." Vash mumbled, lost in donut heaven.

Some time later, after they'd both eaten, Vash sat on the edge of the flyer and took his turn watching the scenery, while Angie drove, one hand resting casually on the thing's controls. The flyer practically flew itself; the only time Vash could imagine encountering trouble would be if they ran into a sandstorm. It was certainly less tiring than crossing the desert on foot... but hardly less tedious.

"I am lost in the desert," Angie said, speaking in a slow monotone as if chanting some kind of mantra. "I am lost in the desert with a donut-eating madman and we have not seen a sign of life in days--"

"Myaaa."

Angie let out a little shriek.

"Yeah," said Vash without looking around, "there's a cat on the back of the flyer. Has been ever since the last town."

The cat had been napping in Vash's shade. It blinked green eyes at Angie ("Myaa...") and then curled up and went back to sleep.

"Where did it come from? Why didn't I see it before?"

"I think it's a stray. It just climbed on board while you were using the restroom." Vash shrugged. "Maybe you didn't see it because you didn't expect to see it -- I mean, you don't go checking your surroundings for cats every time you leave or enter a room. Most people don't. It's surprising how many cats you see when you just look around."

Angie gave him a glare out of the corner of her eye, which he pretended to ignore.

"That is either a very profound comment or a very stupid one... I'm not sure which."

Vash shrugged and petted the cat. Angie went back to staring straight ahead at the white-hot horizon.

"I am lost in the desert. I am lost in the desert with a donut-eating madman. No, make that a donut-eating madman who makes random philosophical comments and a _cat_..."

"With a price on his head," Vash added, gazing off at the horizon.

Angie glanced at him. "A cat with a price on his head?"

"No, me."

"Why do you have a price on your head?"

Now it was his turn to give her a disbelieving look. "Well, I am Vash the Stampede, after all."

The flyer bucked wildly and almost took a nosedive into the ground. "You're VASH THE STAMPEDE? The sixty billion double-dollar guy? The Humanoid Typhoon? THAT Vash the Stampede?"

"You mean you hadn't figured it out?" Vash gazed at her in a kind of mild amazement. "Really? Me and my big mouth..."

"You're kidding."

"No."

Angie leaned over to take a good, long look at him. "Hmm, blond mohawk... check... red coat... check... evil gleam in eyes... not sure about that one..."

"Hey," Vash protested. "Don't get personal."

"I can't believe you're Vash the Stampede. I thought Vash the Stampede was dead."

"How many guys do you think there are named Vash on this planet?"

"I don't know. It could be a very common name."

Vash shook his head and squinted at the horizon, shading his eyes with his hand. "Hey, look! A road!"

"That's not a road," Angie said wearily. "It's a heat shimmer or a mirage or something."

The white ribbon winding through the distant hills turned out to be a set of power lines. Sometimes communities with no Plant of their own were powered by lines like these, stretching from the nearest city's Plant.

"I told you it wasn't a road," Angie said. "Vash the Stampede wouldn't have mistaken that for a road."

"I _am_ Vash the Stampede!"

"Oh, really? Where's your gun?"

"My gun..." That's right. He'd dropped it while he was trying to catch Legato... or Tony. He wondered what had happened to it. Hopefully it hadn't caused any harm. He had tried several times in his life to get rid of the gun -- burying it in the sand, throwing it into a ravine. It always found its way back into his life somehow. He suspected that it would do so again.

"See? You don't even have a--"

"What about this? Huh?" Vash held up his left arm, fist clenched; a little bit of metal gleamed in the sun. He didn't unfold the gun; he hated doing that unless he had to.

"Oh, yeah." Angie drooped, then rallied. "But you never used it."

"I never use it unless someone's life is in danger. For cryin' out loud! You think I'm some kind of rabid mad-dog killer?"

"Of course not," Angie said. "I know YOU'RE not. But Vash the Stampede is. At least, that's what I've always heard about him."

Vash sighed, and gave her a lopsided smile. "Yeah, and don't we both know how everything you hear is always true, right?"

Angie looked away.

Vash sighed. "Well... this may not be a road, but it's got to lead to some kind of civilization, right?"

"True. I wonder which way?"

"Eenie meenie miney moe..."

"My gosh, do you make all your decisions this way? No wonder you're always lost!"

They gave up on "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" and played "rock, paper, scissors" to determine who got to pick the direction. Angie won, so they headed towards the suns, away from the hills and into open desert.

Soon a flat, boxy complex of buildings came into view. The power lines snaked down out of the hills, towards it.

"Not November City," Vash said.

Angie sighed. "All right, so my sense of direction isn't any better than yours, Mr. Humanoid Typhoon. But maybe they know if we're near it. We have to be near it!"

They hid the flyer in the rocks, and Angie triggered its camouflage. Vash couldn't get over how neat that effect was -- one moment the flyer was in front of them, gleaming in the sunshine, and then with a little shimmer, they were facing only rocks.

"Have you ever lost it?" Vash asked her.

Angie half-smiled. "Pretty near. One time it took me and Daniel two days to find it. That's why I always mark it carefully now." She made a little cairn of rocks in front of the flyer's location.

"Isn't it still possible that someone might stumble across it? They'd feel it if they bumped into it."

"Possible, I guess," Angie said. "But not likely. We never had anything like that happen in all the years we lived together."

They started walking downhill, towards the complex of buildings. As they got closer, they could hear a babble of high-pitched voices, screaming and laughing.

"Kids," Angie said. Her voice sounded strained. Vash looked over and saw that her face was white as a sheet. He felt sorry for her, but perhaps... perhaps it was better for her to suffer a little bit in the hell she'd built for herself.

They came closer. The buildings were made of crude mud-brick and formed a rough semicircle. A windmill jutted above the sunbaked roofs, perhaps supplementing the Plant's energy. In all directions the desert stretched to the horizon, white and shimmering beneath the suns.

"What a horrible place for children to grow up," Angie whispered. Then she hesitated. "Hey... I know this place. I think I've been here before..."

Vash looked at her. "You have?"

Angie nodded, pale again. "Years ago."

She didn't seem to want to elaborate, but she hung behind Vash a trifle as they approached.

The mud-brick buildings encircled a central courtyard where small groups of children played brutal games beneath the blazing suns. Vash thought briefly of the city of orphans where he and his friends had spent some time six years ago... shortly before Zazzie the Beast was killed, before Wolfwood -- but he couldn't think of Wolfwood's death. The pain was still too sharp, even after six years.

The kids noticed the approaching strangers, and their cries of laughter and mock aggression gave way to startled squawks as they fled into the shadows of the buildings.

"The usual Humanoid Typhoon effect," Vash murmured. He thought he spoke too softly for Angie to hear him, but she gave him a quick glance, and then looked away, and called, "Hello?"

Angie's voice echoed between the buildings. The two of them stood in the courtyard and Vash suddenly felt very exposed.

"Hi."

A boy stepped out into the sunlight. He was skinny and red-haired, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old.

"We don't see many people out here," he said, looking back and forth from Vash to Angie. "Whaddya want?"

Vash smiled and tried to look harmless. "We just need directions to November City."

"November, huh? That's kinda far." A sly look passed across his sharp features. "I'll tell you how to get there if you do something for me."

"What sort of thing?" Vash said warily.

"You gotta deliver a letter. That's all."

"I can do that," Vash said.

"Okay, then. It's not too hard to get to." He pointed towards the power lines. "You follow that, you come to December City, right? So from there, there's a road goes straight to November. Not hard at all."

"Oh," said Vash. "Thanks a lot."

"No problem. Uh..." The boy hesitated. "You gonna deliver my letter then, huh?"

"Of course I will. I don't lie. Well, not about things like that."

The boy took a grimy envelope and handed it to Vash. "It's for my big brother. Not my real big brother -- I ain't got none. But the closest I got, the closest a lot of the older ones here have got. I don't know if he's alive or dead, and I figure I'll probably never see him again. But if there's any chance at all... Whenever strangers come through, and that ain't often, I ask 'em to take a letter and see if they can find him."

"Sure, I'll take ..." Vash's voice trailed off as he read the name scrawled on the envelope.

"Whatsamatter, mister? You know him?" The boy's face was suddenly hopeful; it looked as if hope was not an emotion accustomed to sitting on his narrow features.

"No," Vash said softly. "No. I'm sorry, kid." He reached into the pockets of his pants and came up with a handful of crumpled doubledollars. "Hey, listen, delivering an old letter is hardly payment for helping us out, right? This'd help keep the orphanage going, right?"

The boy's eyes lit up. "You serious, mister?"

Vash thrust the doubledollars into the boy's hands and turned to Angie. "Do you have any money?"

She started to protest, saw the look in his eyes and wordlessly dug out a handful of cash herself, and gave it to the boy.

"Wow," he muttered.

"Don't spend it on yourself," Vash said. He waved a hand around him, at the low, dirty buildings where he knew the children hid from them, just out of sight. "Spend it on them, okay? Be the kind of person your big brother would be proud of."

The boy stared at the money, then stuck it away in a pocket of his filthy jeans, and grinned at Vash. "I will, mister. Say, you sure you never met my big brother?"

"I'm sure," Vash said quietly. "Thank you for your help. We should be getting along now."

"Good luck, mister."

"You too, kid."

As they started walking back down the path to the flyer, Vash muttered, under his breath, "I hate lying to kids."

"What's wrong?" Angie asked him. "That letter... is it for someone you know?"

"No," Vash said, thinking of the name scrawled on the envelope. Two words, almost illegible. NICHOLAS WOLFWOOD. "Not any more." He gave her a sharp look. "How do you know this place?"

Angie looked away. "I dropped a kid off here once. It doesn't matter... it's over now, and any good I might have tried to do was irrevocably erased by what followed. Forget about it."

Vash stared at her, but she said nothing more, and walked in silence, staring at the ground, until she found the cairn of rocks and her groping hand found the flyer.

The cat was gone, Vash noticed once they were sweeping across the desert once again. He commented on it to Angie.

She shrugged, gazing off blankly at the distant mountains. "Guess it ran off."

"Guess so," Vash said, but he suspected that he'd see, if not the same cat, then at least _a_ black, green-eyed cat before too long. It was one of the more peculiar constants in his life.

They reached December City shortly before dusk, as a brilliant sunset flamed in the sky above the rough outline of the city's buildings.

"That's one thing about this world,"Angie said suddenly, causing Vash to look up from oiling his arm gun. "It has the most beautiful sunsets you could ever imagine..."

"Yeah." He gazed at the suns until his eyes watered and he had to look away. "It does, doesn't it."

They stopped to get a brief meal in a small restaurant on the outskirts of the city, and asked the way to the road to November City. It was easy to find: here on the edges of human civilization, it was the only road leading anywhere, except for a few dirt tracks wandering out to isolated homesteads, fighting their lone, losing battles against the encroaching desert. Neither Vash nor Angie considered stopping for the night. They were so close now... there wasn't even any question.

So they rode on through the desert night. Vash drove, or rather, rested on the console and watched the stars. He turned to Angie, meaning to comment on a particularly bright star overhead, but she was asleep, curled up out of the desert wind. Her tired, lined face had relaxed, and she looked younger, prettier, more like the young woman in his dream who had held her hand out to the child Wolfwood in the burning building.

The letter to Wolfwood felt like a lead weight in Vash's pocket.

 _I dropped a kid off here once..._

Surely there couldn't have been any truth to that dream...?

Vash shook his head, and turned his eyes back to the stars above them. The wind streamed through his short, spiky hair, startlingly cool now that the suns had set, like water pouring across his face. He tried to imagine having enough water to be able to do that -- just stand under a cascade of it, letting it wash away all the dust, all the sin. Rem had told him of streams, of waterfalls. He could not imagine such a thing.

"Rem..." He was not aware that he'd whispered her name aloud, until he tasted the salty tear trickling over his lips when he opened his mouth.

Oh, Rem. He looked up at the stars, and as usual, felt closer to her than he ever could during the day. The stars were piercingly bright tonight. Vash tried to imagine which one might have fostered life on her small, cloud-swirled, blue-green world, the world that he had seen in holograms on the ship, spinning slowly like a beautiful child's toy. The sky was as black as Rem's ravens-wing hair, and the stars glimmered, clear and sharp as ice crystals. To Vash, each one represented a world -- a life -- a possibility. Another place that their small convoy of ships might have landed, starting off a brand-new chain of events -- and who knew how any of them might have ended up?

 _But we don't have that. We only have the present... and it's no good thinking about what things might have been. This is a hard world, but a beautiful one, and it's all we've got._

 _Yet it isn't your Eden... is it, Rem? The perfect world you must have imagined for your son Alex?_

Alex. He tried to imagine Alex Saverem, Rem's son. Surely an old man now, judging from Angie's story. How it must have hurt Rem to live her life on the ships, growing ever older, while her son slept without waking or dreaming -- a hurt so deep that she had never spoken of her son to the little boys she had raised as her own.

And what must it have been like for Alex, waking on an alien world with no mother, no father, just the burden of Rem's ideals? No wonder he had created a great weapon...

 _It must not be a weapon. There must be some other explanation..._

He did not wake Angie that night. She woke on her own, as the stars faded with the first light of dawn.

"Ugh... V-Vash! It's morning! Didn't you want to sleep?"

"Wouldn't have been able to," Vash said. He lowered himself, stiffly, from the flyer's steering console and let Angie take over.

They were in the mountains again -- another range, or the same one, snaking back and forth across the skin of the oceanless world. Angie was stirred out of her apathy somewhat by the sight of the peaks, gleaming blinding white as the rays of the rising sun struck them.

"Look, Vash! Look at those mountaintops. It can't be... snow?"

Vash had to think a moment to remember what "snow" was -- another of the odd Earth phenomena that Rem had described to him. "It's just alkali salts, catching the light," he said, and then felt bad when Angie's briefly animated eyes closed down again.

"Oh," she said softly, and stared ahead, concentrating on driving.

Vash felt an impulse to apologize... but for what, really? He was sorry that she had left her world behind. Sorry that she was stuck in a place she hated. Sorry she'd had a horrible life, and lost everything she cared about.

 _Your life is what you make it, no more, no less._ Rem's voice again. Vash wondered what Rem would have made of Angie, and Angie of Rem. He had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't have gotten along very well. Their life philosophies were too different.

By midmorning, the winding track they were following had become a smooth road, with small towns alongside. They had to retreat and travel through the broken country alongside the road, to avoid being seen, for they were starting to pass traffic now -- lone riders with canteens hanging from their saddles, farm trucks bumping along that looked a hundred years old if they were a day, families walking alongside the road dragging carts of merchandise to sell.

"November City is quite large," Angie said. "Have you been there?"

Vash shrugged. "Years ago. It wasn't large, then." He didn't want to mention just how many years ago it had been. Angie knew, intellectually, that he was over 130 years old, but he didn't want to throw the concrete facts of it into her face. He didn't want to mention that he had seen isolated clusters of farmhouses grow into towns, flourish and finally die under the merciless desert sun. He'd seen old men die whose grandfathers he had known as children. He doubted that Angie, as hard as her life had been, could imagine or would want to imagine such a life.

Finally they had to abandon the flyer. The countryside was getting too densely populated. They found a nice, isolated pile of rocks, not far from a little farm road leading to the main highway.

"I wonder how much harm it would do, really, to ride it right into the middle of town," Vash mused.

"We don't want to make that kind of stir," Angie said.

Vash spread his arms, the red coat flaring around him. "As if I'm not going to make a stir wearing this."

"Everyone thinks Vash the Stampede is dead, right?" She squinted at him. "I'm still not totally convinced myself. We'll go in, talk to Alex Saverem, and then..."

Her voice trailed off.

Yeah, Vash thought. Then what?

They had been living moment-to-moment for the last few days, not thinking of anything beyond finding November City, and Alex Saverem, before Tony could beat them there. But what next? What could they do, hide Alex until Tony came looking for him? Then what?

And I'm neglecting my own responsibilities, Vash thought with a hard pang of guilt. There's not one, but _two_ madmen loose on this world... and the other one is my brother.

Not for the first time -- nor the tenth, nor the hundredth -- he closed his eyes and tried as hard as he could to make himself aware of Knives' presence. They'd been able to do it when they were boys, but that connection had been cruelly broken during the crash, and after, when Vash hated his brother as he had never hated anyone before. He had thought the sense of each others' presence was gone forever, yet Knives had still seemed able to sense him, and find him, even many years later... and during the last six years, caring for Knives' comatose body, he had thought the bond had been forged again. Thought that he could trust Knives to sleep, trust himself to feel Knives awaken.

 _Trust KNIVES. What's the point of living a hundred years if you never learn from your mistakes, eh, Vash old boy?_

He was about to turn back to Angie when he froze.

That time, he _had_ felt something.

He'd felt it only once before, since Knives' disappearance -- that time in March City when he'd glimpsed the man who looked shockingly like Wolfwood. Accidentally he'd brushed against the blond-haired girl beside the man, and then he had felt a twinge like this. It was like the connection he shared with Knives, like the soft touch of Knives' mind against his own, but... changed somehow.

Vash spun around, scanning the barren rocks around them. The only movement was a scavenger bird, flying past high overhead.

"Vash?"

"Just a weird thought," he muttered. "Nevermind."

Angie was looking at him strangely. He tried to recapture that odd feeling, but failed. It had only been there for an instant.

Vash stared toward November City, hidden from them by a fold of the land. Was it possible -- could the girl be there?

But that was silly. This was November City, half a world away from where he'd last seen the girl and her companion. Why would she have come here too? Of course she hadn't; he was imagining things.

Yet she had been in March City when the Plant exploded...

Vash shivered, cold even in the hot sun. The Plants were still agitated. He could sense their unusually strong emotions all the time, a low undercurrent that made him jumpy even in the middle of the day. Without actual contact with a Plant, though, he had no way of knowing what was upsetting them so much. He wondered if it might be a good idea to visit November City's Plant facility and talk to the Plants there. It was never easy to get useful information out of a Plant, but it might be nice to pay a visit to his own kind in any case.

His own kind... he'd never felt further from the Plants than he did right now.

"Vash?" Angie said, still looking at him with concerned. He forced a goofy grin, and laughed.

"Just thought I saw something up on the hills! Guess it wasn't anything."

"Tony?" Angie breathed, whirling around.

"No. Not Tony. Come on, don't worry."

Reluctantly, she followed him. As they walked away from the flyer, Vash kept looking over his shoulder, reassuring himself that it was still there even though he couldn't see it. Finally they crossed a ravine and he could no longer see the rock pile where they had left it.

They walked along the road for most of the day, and as evening came, they were standing in front of a small inn on the edges of November City.

"I'm so... thirsty..." Vash moaned. "Water..."

"You complain constantly," Angie snapped, but her voice grated in her dry throat. The two travelers staggered through the doors of the inn, and stopped.

They had stepped out of the day's heat, expecting the inn's lobby to be even hotter and stuffier than it was in the dusty street. Instead, it was shockingly, refreshingly cool.

Vash stared around in surprise. The inn's common room was small but tidy, a vast change from the dirty, dark frontier barrooms where he tended to end up. Small groups of people were playing cards or drinking at the little round tables.

Vash and Angie crossed to the counter and asked for a room. The price was high, but not exorbitant.

"So this might seem like an odd question," Vash said, as he paid some of their last doubledollars, "but how do you folks keep it so cool in here?"

"Air conditioning," Angie breathed, just as the clerk said without much interest, "Wha', you mean the air conditionin'?"

"What's that?"

The clerk looked at Angie, who smiled at him tightly and said, "He's been sick." She dragged Vash away from the counter.

"Hey! What? I never head of anything like --"

"Vash, look." Angie walked over to one of several boxlike things, set along the walls. She stood under it and turned her face up to it, closing her eyes in bliss. Vash did likewise and felt the cool air flowing out of the device.

Oh. It was like the climate control on the Seeds ships, only specifically designed to cool the temperature in the room. Vash stared at it, wondering how it worked.

"But this is wonderful!" Angie said, and he looked down at her. "I haven't seen air conditioning anywhere else on this world! How widespread do you think it is?"

"The guy at the counter seemed surprised that we didn't know about it," Vash said, dropping his voice. They were drawing some odd looks.

"Maybe this proves that Alex Saverem is here," Vash whispered, feeling his excitement mount.

"What, you didn't believe me?"

They eased their thirst from paper cups filled at a water cooler in the corner. The regulars were watching them nervously. Vash grinned and waved to them. Angie glared at him. He subsided.

"So... do you know where in November City Alex Saverem lives?"

Angie shook her head. "We could ask the clerk, I guess."

After drinking their fill, they trooped back over to the counter. The clerk looked up from a girlie magazine without much interest. "What's wrong now? No towels? Roaches in the bed?"

"No," Angie said, suppressing a slight shudder. "We just wanted to know if you..." She trailed off beneath his bored stare, and Vash leaned around her.

"Hi," Vash said, grinning like a cheerful maniac. "We're looking for a guy named Alex Saverem. Know him?"

Vash saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, and tensed automatically, though his grin didn't falter. Several of the people at the tables had turned to look at them.

The clerk's eyes darted to the people at the tables, then back to Vash and Angie. "Never heard of him," he said, but his eyes looked a lot less vacant than they had just a few moments before.

"Are you sure?"

"I said I don't know him."

Angie slipped a crumpled twenty-doubledollar from under her belt. She, like Vash, had noticed that the two of them had become the center of attention in the room, and she tried without much success to keep her hand hidden from the general view of the room. "Are you sure you don't know him?"

The clerk looked from the money, to Angie's dirty face, as if he was staring at something that had just crawled out from under a rock. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just remembered. We've got a conference in town this week. All the rooms are booked up. Sorry. Here's your money back."

He pushed their money across the counter. By now, everyone in the room was looking at them. Vash felt the hostile stares crawl across his back. During the last six years, he'd almost forgotten what it was like to be stared at with hatred wherever he went. He hadn't missed it.

"Hey!" Angie snapped. "We paid for -- What are you doing?"

Now it was Vash's turn to grab her by the elbow and lead her away, scooping up the money with his other hand. "Thank you very much," he said over his shoulder to the clerk. "We're sorry to take up your time."

"Don't mention it," the clerk said in a harsh undertone, and continued to stare at them -- along with everyone else -- as they hurried out into the warm evening breeze.

"My gosh," Angie breathed. They sat down on the porch for a moment. "What do you suppose that was all about?"

"I don't know." Vash's heart was still beating fast. He'd been sure that one of those people was going to pull a gun -- and then there would be more shooting, more killing -- "He didn't like us asking questions about Alex Saverem, that's for sure."

"I wonder if Alex is feared or hated here. I admit I've never met the man, but from the things Daniel said about his father... I would never have expected that."

"I don't know," Vash said. "They seemed to fear and hate _us_ more. I wonder if they were trying to protect him from us?"

Angie's eyes widened. "What sort of man could have an entire town trying to protect him?"

"I don't know." But Vash was thinking of Rem. She was the sort of woman who could inspire that kind of fierce loyalty, he was sure. For a moment he felt his heavy heart lift a bit. Maybe Alex Saverem was not the monster he had feared, after all...

There was a movement at their backs and they both whirled. The clerk of the hotel had stepped out onto the porch. Behind him, they could see the patrons moving in the shadows. "I thought I told you folks we don't have any vacancies. No loitering."

Angie looked irked, but Vash, who was much more accustomed to getting thrown out of places, hopped to the ground. "We were just going. Have a nice evening."

The clerk vanished back into the hotel, but Vash sensed that the two of them were still being watched as they walked off down the street.

They walked for some time before trying another hotel. This one was even more expensive than the last, but at least they got a room without trouble -- or rather, Vash got the room while Angie wandered about, looking at all the unusual objects in the lobby... anachronistic, Earth-style lamps and bits of technology. This time Vash didn't mention Alex Saverem's name at all, and the desk clerk was perfectly polite to him and didn't mention any out-of-town conventions. He got a room on the second floor... his experience had generally been that it's better to make it as difficult as possible for your enemies to climb in the window, but not to be so high above the ground that you can't jump out if you need to do so.

The room was small for its exorbitant price, but neat and clean. Vash looked around, pleased. Angie looked less pleased. "So where's mine?"

Vash eyed the ceiling. "Uh... I only got one."

"One?" she snapped huffily, reminding him startlingly of Meryl for a moment.

"We can only afford one. Besides," he added (quite reasonably, he thought), "We've been sleeping around the same campfire for days now."

"Yes, but not in a _bed!_ And I was planning on taking a bath..."

Vash sighed.

"Look, I'll take a walk while you take your bath. Would that be all right?"

"Do you mind?" She looked at him beseechingly.

"Yeah. Look, I'll check around for Alex Saverem. How about it?"

"Thank you, Vash. You're a prince among... homicidal outlaw gunmen." She smiled to deflect the sting of the comment. Vash had a suspicion that she still didn't believe him.

While Angie headed for the bathroom, Vash sighed resignedly, and went back downstairs. He had been so looking forward to a bath.

Outside in the street, the setting sun hung low on the edge of the world, painting the town the color of fresh blood. Vash shivered slightly, reminding himself that it wasn't a premonition, it wasn't a sign, it certainly didn't mean that the streets of this town would be running with blood before he left... aargh. He hit himself in the head with the heel of his hand a couple of times, trying to banish the negative thoughts.

All right. First things first. While he hadn't lied to Angie about searching for Alex Saverem, there was something that he wanted to do -- needed to do -- even more urgently. At least, unlike Alex Saverem, this person wouldn't be hard to find. Vash looked around until he spotted the great curve of this city's Plant facility, gleaming in the dying rays of the sun, and started walking towards it.

For the first time in ages, or so it seemed to him, he got a stroke of luck. He didn't have to break in. This Plant, like a few others he had visited over the years, was open to visitors. The technician on duty told him that visiting hours were ending in a few minutes, but he was welcome to walk through the Plant chamber.

Vash stood under the great, glowing curve of the bell, his face upturned and his hands gripping the visitors' railing, and reached out to touch the collective unconscious of the Plants.

He found... nothing.

Startled, Vash reached out again and again. It was like he'd hit a wall. He didn't get the impression that the Plant was unaware of his presence, but it didn't seem to want to talk to him.

That had never happened before. The Plants were distant, alien, somewhat incomprehensible even to him, but he'd never felt anything other than warmth and acceptance from them.

 _What is it? What's wrong? Why won't you talk to me? Please answer!_

But there was only the light, that neither apologized nor explained.

"Heard you were looking for me," said a soft voice from behind him.

Vash almost jumped out of his skin, and spun around.

The old man limped out of the shadows into the glow of the bell. He leaned heavily on a cane, and peered at Vash over half-moon glasses sitting on the end of his nose.

"Yeah. Red coat. Blond spiky hair. What do you want with me, Vash the Stampede?"

Vash stood, staring stupidly, not sure if his immobility was the shock of being called by his name -- or the shock of standing face-to-face with a person whose existence he had not even suspected until mere days ago. He knew he should say something... but what?

Alex Saverem.

Rem's son.

The old man halted and stood staring at Vash, equally as curious, it seemed.

"Always wanted to see you up close," he said finally.

Vash managed to find his voice. "You -- you know who I am."

"Sure I do. Can't be too many people in this world that fit your description. Heard Vash the Stampede was dead, but I guess rumors lie, as usual."

"They do indeed," Vash said weakly. "So you're ... Alex Saverem, correct?"

Saverem nodded, and clumped around Vash, his cane thumping on the metal floor, studying the outlaw from all angles.

"Don't look that dangerous," he said at last.

Vash opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then said, "You knew an outlaw was looking for you... and you came to see me? Unarmed?"

It sounded just like something Rem would have done, he thought.

Alex shrugged. "They said you folks didn't have any weapons. I was curious what you wanted. That's all."

"I could be planning to kill you."

"Are you?"

"Well," Vash admitted, "no."

"There you go, then," Alex Saverem said, sounding vindicated.

"But you can't -- you can't go around trusting people like that!" Vash protested, thinking at the same time, in some distant part of his mind -- _Is that ME talking? What kind of effect have Knives and Legato had on me..._

"Why shouldn't I trust people? I've lived here all my life, I've done my best to provide for the folks who live here and help them survive. I don't have any enemies."

Vash's heart sank. "That's... actually kind of why we're here."

Saverem merely looked at him, head cocked to one side.

"Look, can we go somewhere to talk? It's important. A matter of life and death, actually."

"Whose?" Alex Saverem inquired.

"Whose what?"

"Whose life and death?"

"Yours," Vash admitted.

"Well, then," Saverem said thoughtfully. "I suppose it would be in my best interests to hear you out. This way?"

Without waiting for a response, he clumped off. Vash followed, not sure what else to do. Alex Saverem said a cheerful hello to the technician, asked after her family, and then beckoned Vash outside.

Night had fallen while he'd been inside the Plant facility. The western sky was blood red with the fading glow of the suns (NOT an omen, Vash firmly told himself) and pools of lamplight gave a warm, homey glow to the dark streets. Vash followed Alex Saverem, numbly, thinking how peaceful it all seemed. Some children were playing kickball in front of an open door. Nearby, a woman sat rocking on a porch, knitting. Alex Saverem said hello to each person they passed, and all seemed to know him, though they glared at Vash suspiciously.

 _It's so peaceful. So happy. Every time a town looks like this, things always go to hell before too long. Just once, why can't a peaceful little town STAY peaceful with me around?_

"Home sweet home," Alex Saverem said, pausing before a small adobe house with a white-painted wrought-iron fence around its small, tasteful garden. He shoved the gate open with his cane and Vash followed him through, pulling the gate closed behind him. They went down a narrow winding path through the garden, and Vash marveled at how the space had been effectively used to make the tiny yard seem much bigger than it really was. Although he couldn't see the garden very well in the dark, he brushed against a cactus by accident and realized that it was all planted with dry-climate vegetation -- beautiful, yet in perfect harmony with its environment, wasting no unnecessary water on extravagant greenery, even though Alex Saverem could probably have gotten all the water he desired.

 _He could live in a mansion, for that matter. I'm sure of it. The townspeople would probably build him one if he so much as hinted. Instead he lives here, in this tiny house._

So far, he's everything I'd hoped to find in a child of Rem. He seems so much like her...

Then why do I have this feeling... like everything isn't right, isn't right at all? Is it just that I've grown so suspicious over the years that I no longer know what to do when good fortune comes my way? Am I the one who has betrayed Rem's teachings, after all?

Damn it all to heck -- I CAN'T push down this fear. I don't dare, not with the lives of everyone in town depending on me. Not until I know what the Genesis Machine is... and how to reconcile something so fearful that even Tony respects it with this little house, this kind man...

Alex Saverem pushed open the door.

"You don't lock your door?" Vash said, startled out of his reverie.

Alex shrugged. "Why should I? I have no enemies."

"Look, I've just been trying to _tell_ you--"

Something moved in the dark interior of the room. A lean figure unfolded slowly, straightening up from casually resting against the edge of a table. Black clothes, vanishing into blackness... only a faint glimmer of a pale face in the moonlight gave any indication that their visitor was human at all...

Vash froze.

"And who might you be?" Alex Saverem said, quite calmly.

 _He's Rem's son, all right. He'd probably walk right up to somebody holding a gun to his forehead without even realizing he was in danger --_

 _Yeah, and who else do we know who does THAT?_

"Get down!" Vash yelled, shoving Alex Saverem out of the way and interposing his own body between the old man and the stranger. Alex fell to the floor and Vash fell on his knees next to him, unfolding his arm gun in frantic fear. Gotta get away from the door ... we're silhouetted against the streetlights, a perfect target...

"You have a bodyguard, eh, Alex?" the stranger said softly. "I wouldn't have expected it, but then I don't know you at all, do I?"


	19. The Other Side of Paradise

"Hey! You shaved!"

"Do you have any idea how much a beard itches in this heat?" Alex retorted.

"You missed a few spots, though."

"You try shaving without a mirror, kid." He touched his face, feeling the rough, stubbly patches. "Fine, so I still look like a hobo. At least I no longer look like a wino, and that's a step up as far as I'm concerned."

Sand giggled. "I dunno. I thought the beard was kind of... cute."

"Shaving it was your idea originally, kiddo!"

She giggled again, not at all put out. "Are you going to cut your hair, too?"

Alex fingered his long locks thoughtfully. "It _is_ a pain in the ass..."

"You'd better not!"

He laughed. "So you like it long, little girl?"

Sand shrugged, and looked away. Alex's smile faltered. It was the first time he'd gotten her to laugh in days.

He put away the razor with some feelings of nervousness. Okay, so growing a beard hadn't quite worked out that well. Guys in his family just seemed to get stuck in an era of perpetual stubble until they gave up and shaved again. But he felt a bit exposed without at least that passing pretense at changing the shape of his face.

 _It's ridiculous. How many people on this entire world would be able to recognize you at sight? And how many of them are here in this part of the world, f'r cryin' out loud? So stop being a moron. You're going to be back in civilization soon, and you may as well look the part._

At least he'd gotten Sand to smile. She was so serious and sad these days. She hardly ate at all, and as far as he could tell, hardly slept either. Often he would wake in the night to see her sitting with her back against a rock, a blanket wrapped around her skinny shoulders, staring off into the distance.

Sand stretched, her blue eyes distant again. "Well, I need to take care of, you know. Necessaries."

Alex grinned. "I'll start breakfast."

She wandered out of sight behind the rocks and he boiled water in the coals of their little campfire. The meager meal was almost finished when he realized that Sand hadn't come back.

"Hey, kid?" Alex called. "Food's ready."

No answer.

He shivered slightly in the warm wind blowing down from the mountains. _Come on, what's going to happen to her? There aren't any Gung-Ho Guns around here. She'd hardly appreciate you disturbing her privacy._

He took a few irresolute steps in the direction in which she'd gone.

 _Maybe she ran into bandits or some kind of predator. Maybe she collapsed from lack of food and sleep._

Maybe you worry too much.

 _Maybe it wouldn't hurt to just take a quick look..._

He climbed to the top of the rise behind their camp and scanned the area quickly. There was no sign of her, but that didn't mean anything... she could easily be concealed in one of the ravines.

Standing still in the wind, Alex suddenly became aware of a soft undertone to its ceaseless whispering among the rocks. He closed his eyes and listened. He wasn't mistaken -- he could hear Sand's voice, although he couldn't make out the words.

Who could she be talking to?

Seized by fear, he made his way down the slope, listening intently. Sometimes the wind changed and he lost the thin thread of her voice, only to come around a corner and pick it up again. Sometimes he thought he'd lost it, but she had only paused for breath or to listen for an answer from whoever she was talking to. Occasionally he glanced back to make sure that he wasn't leaving the camp too far behind.

Finally he topped another ridge and saw her. She was sitting crosslegged on top of a boulder. The morning sun shone on her blond hair, making it glow like a halo around her head. She was staring at nothing, and talking quietly, with occasional breaks just as if she was carrying on a real conversation.

Alex just stood there, staring at her. He knew he was invading her privacy, knew he could say something, but he couldn't figure out what to say.

 _Pardon me, but who are you talking to? And, more importantly, are they answering?_

Before he could say anything, though, Sand glanced his way, and then glanced back quickly, and broke off in midsentence. For an instant he thought her eyes were glowing again, but she blinked and the effect was gone, and he supposed it must have been an effect of the morning sun, like the pale nimbus around her head.

"Alex?" Sand said, sounding rather small and scared.

"Breakfast's done," he said lamely. "Uh, if it hasn't burned by now, that is."

"I'm sorry, I guess I ... I just stopped to look at the desert and lost track of time. Sorry."

She was very quiet on the walk back to camp, and merely picked at the plate of food he handed her, eating nothing.

They drove all day, as usual, and by afternoon they were starting to get into country Alex recognized vaguely. So many years since he'd been back this way, but he could still pick out landmarks that he remembered. Sand was a soft heavy weight against the small of his back, and Alex thought she'd fallen asleep.

She wasn't sleeping.

 _What's happening to me?_ Sand stared at the speed-blurred countryside with unfocused eyes, her gaze turned inward. _Am I losing my mind?_

 _You are not losing it... but regaining it._

Sand gritted her teeth. _Go away, Voice. Go away go away GO AWAY!_

Suddenly she jumped, almost falling off the motorcycle. For an instant she'd felt something brush against her mind, like the fluttering of a moth's wing. Warm. Familiar. Comforting. The Voice had fled, and for this briefest of moments, she was alone in her head. It felt... wonderful.

Alex pulled the motorcycle over to the side of the road and stopped. He looked over his shoulder at her. "You okay back there, kid?"

"I'm fine," Sand said, leaning wearily against his back.

"You get hit by a rock off the road or something?"

"No, I just... had a dream, I guess. I was almost asleep."

Lying came easily to her now, and she regretted that. She hated lying to Alex.

"Think you can get back on? We're close now. Real close."

Sand nodded and straddled the bike behind him, unobtrusively adjusting her body to conceal the silver gun. It felt warm against her skin, almost hot.

"So who are we going to see?" she asked, resting her head against Alex's back as he pulled back out onto the road. She realized with a sort of tired, dazed wonder that she'd never even asked, in all these days of traveling.

Alex hesitated a moment before responding. "My grandfather. I know it sounds a bit odd, but he was actually born on the world we humans came from. Earth, it's called. At least that's what my uncle used to say."

Sand could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn't like his uncle much, but she still couldn't help thinking, _How wonderful to have family..._

Alex laughed shortly, as if reacting to her thoughts. "Don't know how happy he'll be to see me after all these years. It's not like he made a great effort to get in touch after my parents died. He should have... but it doesn't matter now. The last time I saw him, I was a little kid."

"What if he's dead?" Sand asked.

Alex shook his head. "Only if he's died in the last couple of years. I made a point of checking him out occasionally... just to see, you know. From a distance. See that he was okay. Not like I care. But it's a rough world, and a lot can happen to an old guy. Even if he's a bastard."

"Is your grandfather... not a nice person, then?"

"I don't know, kid. He raised someone like my uncle Chapel, so he can't possibly be a saint. And he never tried to get me, not once in all those years. Maybe he thought I was dead. Who knows. Anyway, from what I've heard, he knows a lot about Plants. More than anyone else alive, some people say. If anyone can help you, he can."

"I hope so," Sand whispered, resting her face against Alex's jacket.

She dozed on the back of the motorcycle, only waking when they bumped to a halt. Sand was jolted out of dark, frightening dreams, and for a moment she could only look around, trying to figure out where she was. She could still hear the echoes of voices crying out to her -- not The Voice this time, but voices raised in pain and fear.

"Hey," Alex said, sliding off the motorcycle. "Wake up, kid. We're here."

Sand let him help her off, but when her feet touched the ground, _her legs began to walk. In a direction she didn't intend to go._ She hadn't told them to. The feeling of being out of control of her own body terrified her so badly that she fell to the ground.

The Voice wasn't just in her mind anymore. It was reaching out into her whole body. All she could do was shiver with fear.

 _Alex's grandfather can't help me. He'd probably try, but he doesn't know any more than anybody else. Nobody knows what's wrong with me and nobody knows how to help me and I'm going to hurt someone again..._

"Sand? You okay?"

"Yeah," she whispered, looking into Alex's worried face and wishing, once again, that she could stop lying to him. She liked this man. She liked him a lot. He was the only person besides the old women who raised her--

\-- _the old women you killed_ \--

\--who'd ever treated her like a human being.

She'd rather die than hurt Alex.

 _He's not your friend. He's a human. You can't trust any of them. Especially not that one. His ancestor betrayed us all. HE PERSONALLY BETRAYED ME._

Shut up, Voice, she thought furiously, and got to her feet, hanging onto Alex's arm.

"It's been a long day in the sun," he said. "Why don't we get a hotel room, and you can get a bit of sleep while I go find my grandfather."

Sand started to protest, then thought better of it. _I guess he just thinks it's a bit of sunstroke ... better than him knowing the truth._ "I guess so," she mumbled, and allowed herself to be led across the dusty, darkening street. Her mind was working furiously. _It's getting stronger and stronger. I shouldn't have let Alex bring me here, to this town full of people. I've got to get away before something bad happens._

But she didn't seem to have the power to move on her own anymore. Numbly she let Alex lead her through a set of swinging saloon-style doors. It was almost dark outside, and the light within hurt her eyes. She closed them and surrendered herself to Alex, feeling soft carpet or rug material under her feet. Alex eased her down into a chair, patted her hand and murmured, "I'll be right back."

She opened her eyes and watched him walk over to the clerk's desk, terrified for a moment to let him get too far away, afraid he wouldn't come back.

 _He's safer without me, though._

Her eyes wandered away from Alex, wandered across the surprisingly plush interior of the hotel lobby. She wondered if everywhere in town was this nice. A few people were drinking tea or eating dinner. One woman caught Sand's eye. The woman was staring at Alex. She'd apparently been drinking a cup of tea and reading a magazine, but the magazine lay forgotten, open on the table, the tea cooling next to it.

Sand studied her curiously, eager for something to take her mind off her own problems. This woman looked like she'd had problems of her own, though. Brown hair straggled around a face that might once have been pretty, but was worn by deep lines of pain and sorrow.

Alex returned to her table. "This is a pretty pricey town. I could only afford the one room, but I asked them to bring up a cot from the back. Gonna be nice to sleep in a bed again, hey, kid?"

Sand dragged her eyes back to him, and nodded. "Yeah. Alex, that woman's been watching you. Do you know her?"

Alex turned his head, and Sand saw him stiffen.

The woman got to her feet and approached them.

"I thought surely I was dreaming," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "It's so good to see you again."

Alex hesitated, then, to Sand's surprise, he grabbed the woman in a tight, crushing hug.

"I thought you might be dead, Angie," he said, his voice slightly muffled by her hair.

Angie pushed him back, half-laughing, with tears in her eyes. Some of the other people in the hotel lobby were giving them odd looks.

"Oh, Hikari," she said, catching her breath in something between a laugh and a sob. "You're alive. You're healthy. You don't know how I've dreamed... And you're free, aren't you? We both are. Daniel's dead."

"I know," Alex said, gently disentangling her arms. "I was there."

"You--" She hesitated, looking into his eyes. "I never got a chance to ask you, then -- Did you kill him, Hikari? Did you kill your uncle?"

Sand looked back and forth between them, frustrated by the feeling that she was missing a good chunk of the conversation.

Alex shook his head. "I could have, but I didn't. Something stopped me. No -- someone stopped me. Or the memory of someone. Someone who made me realize that it is possible for me to be the man I always wanted to be. I haven't picked up a gun since that day."

"Oh," Angie said quietly. She smoothed a strand of hair back from his face -- a motherly gesture, or that of a big sister. "So what are you doing in this town, Hikari? Are you here to see your grandfather?"

Alex nodded. "Or rather, she is," he said, nodding to Sand, who smiled briefly. "I'm just along as an escort. Oh, Sand! Sorry, kid. This is Angelina, an old friend from my childhood. Angie, this is Sand. We've been traveling together."

Sand smiled politely. Angie leaned over and pulled the startled girl into a hug. "Any friend of my Hikari is a friend of mine. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sand."

Sand caught her breath, afraid she might start crying. No one had ever greeted her that way. "Angelina -- like the bike?" she said.

Alex blushed right to the roots of his black hair.

"What's she talking about, Hikari?" Angie said.

"Nothing. Never mind. Anyhow -- we've got a lot of catching up to do! What are you doing in November City, Angie?"

"We're also here to see your grandfather," Angie said with a smile. "It's a small world, isn't it?"

Alex looked suddenly wary. "Who's we?"

"Vash and myself."

Sand's eyes darted to Alex's face at his sudden, small intake of breath. He had gone pale. "Vash?" he repeated. "Vash is _here_?"

"Oh, no, it's not what you're thinking! Not the outlaw, Vash the Stampede. Of course not. This is a gentle man, one who only happens to bear that name."

"Yeah," Alex muttered. "That's what they all say." He fumbled in his pocket, dug out a cigarette and lit it. Sand saw that his hands were shaking slightly.

"Those aren't good for you," Angie said maternally. "I'd hoped you would have given up that habit."

"Yeah, well, the habits of a lifetime are hard to break, aren't they? All of them." Alex took a few deep drags on the cigarette and looked down at Sand, who had sunk down sleepily into her chair.

"We'd better get you upstairs to bed, kiddo."

"Are you sick, hon?" Angie asked, touching Sand's cheek with the back of her hand. "Oh, you're burning up."

"Just a little sun," Sand muttered. Being fussed over made her very uncomfortable. It reminded her too much of the two old women, the only family she'd ever had --

 _\-- who you killed --_

\-- who you MADE me kill, Voice, if I did it at all--

Her expression must have gone all distracted, because she saw Alex and Angie looking at her with concern. She wanted to say something to calm them, but she seemed to be looking at them down a long tunnel. It was that same sliding-away-from-her-body feeling that she'd experienced that morning, only to wake on a boulder with Alex staring at her in concern and no knowledge of how she got there. Or that afternoon, when her body had started to move without her volition.

And _it was happening again._ Sand stared in fascinated horror at her own hand, laying on the table in front of her like a stick of deadwood. It twitched, then folded briefly into a fist.

 _This is like a nightmare. I'm going to do something horrible, only it won't be me really, it'll just be my body -- but I'll be able to watch, trapped behind my own eyes --_

Alex leaned over and shook her gently. "Hey, kid. Kid! Come on. Let's go to bed."

Sand let him help her stand and lead her towards the stairs, with Angie hovering behind.

 _They're good people. That's why I can't let this happen to them. I have to do something. I won't let it happen again._

By the time they got upstairs, to her and Alex's room, Sand was walking under her own power and feeling more in control of herself. She managed a smile as she shrugged off Alex's hand. "I'm okay. I just need to take a bath and get something to eat. Then I'll be better."

Alex looked at her helplessly. She hated seeing that concerned look in his eyes. "You do that, kid. I'll go see if my grandfather still lives where he used to. With any luck, he'll know something about what's going on with you."

"I hope so," Sand said carefully, and then quickly, suddenly, she reached out and put her arms around Alex's chest. He hesitated, then put his arms around her, too.

It felt so good to be held, protected. Sand closed her eyes to keep the tears away.

"Thank you so much, Alex," she said into his chest. "Thank you for helping me. Thank you for everything."

 _And goodbye._

"It's okay, kid," Alex said, stroking her hair. "You're just in a bit of trouble. Hopefully soon you'll be out of it. Buck up, okay?"

Sand looked up at him and forced a smile. "Doing better already," she said.

She pushed away from him, hoping her self-control didn't crack until he was gone. _Just leave, won't you, just leave..._

"I'll be right down the hall if you need me, sweetheart," Angie said.

"Thank you very much," Sand murmured politely, and closed the door.

She stood there for a moment, listening to their footsteps and voices retreating down the corridor. Then she slumped down on the bed without bothering to take her shoes off.

Alex was right... it felt really, really good to lie on a real bed again. She felt a wave of weariness engulf her, but she didn't dare sleep, no matter how tired she was. She was terribly afraid of waking to the aftermath of some kind of horror she'd caused without remembering it.

Sand clenched her hands, seeking the resolution to do what she knew she had to do.

 _Alex... I'm sorry. Sorry you came all this way out here, confronted things you wanted to leave behind, because of me. I wish your grandfather could help me. I wish I dared wait to find out. But I just can't. I can feel myself losing control of my own body._

I have to do what I can, while there's still time.

* * *

"Do you think we should get a doctor for her?" Angie asked.

Alex hesitated, but shook his head. "No. I really don't think it'd help. She's been more or less like that ever since I've known her. I brought her out here hoping my grandfather will be able to help her."

"Is he a doctor, then? Daniel never really told me much about him."

"Not really. Close enough. I dunno. He might be dead, for all I know."

"He isn't," Angie said, and then after a moment, "Well, I hope not. That's what we're here to prevent."

"What are you talking about?"

Angie looked away. "There's a man after your grandfather, Alex. A very, very bad man."

A spasm of terrible pain crossed her face. Alex was suddenly glad that he hadn't asked about Lucas. He'd noticed that she didn't have her son with her, and had a deep suspicion that the kid wasn't still alive.

"I think we beat him here," Angie said. "But we have to get your grandfather out of here. I don't know where Vash went -- looking for him, maybe."

 _Oh, peachy. Just what I need._

"All I need to do is find him and talk to him. My grandfather, not Vash." Definitely not Vash. "I'll help in any way I can -- I don't like to think of you in danger, Angie."

Angie smiled a tired, sad smile, and touched the side of his face. "I've been in danger longer than you've been alive, Hikari. Don't worry about me."

"I do worry about you, I -- Angie..." He stopped in the hallway and took her by the arms. "Angie, I'm so sorry I left you with Uncle Chapel, all those years ago. You... and later, you and Lucas, though I didn't know about Lucas at that time. I didn't know what to do, you understand? I was just a kid. A scared kid. I felt like if I stayed with my uncle any longer, I'd wind up just like him, and that thought scared the hell out of me."

"You're not at all like Daniel," Angie said in a low, fervent voice. "Not at all. I don't blame you for any of it. I made my own life into the mess it became. It isn't your fault."

Alex smiled slightly. "One of these days you'll have to tell me a little more about yourself, Angelina. And about that place I woke up in, that place you took me before you vanished the last time. That was crazy. Lost technology, was it? Never seen anything like it."

"Hikari..." Angie slid her hands to rest on his. "Do you think you could find that place again? Do you remember how you got there?"

"I think so. I almost died, walking out of there. It's way the hell in the middle of nowhere."

"I know. I'm sorry. I wouldn't have left you there if I'd had any choice. But... listen, Hikari... If we get separated here, let's meet back there, okay? I've come to feel that my life will come full circle, sooner or later. My life on this world began on that ship, and fate keeps bringing me back to it. If something happens... meet me there, okay?"

"Nothing's going to happen, Angie." He gripped her hands firmly. "We're back together again, right? Let's stay that way for a while."

"You never know. Life is cruel." She slid her hands out of his. "I think I'm going to go lie down and sleep until Vash gets back."

"Could you look in on Sand for me, if I'm out late? I wouldn't want her to wake up in a strange place, alone."

Angie smiled faintly. "You're a good man, Hikari. I'm glad to see the kind of man you've grown into."

Alex looked away, unable to meet her eyes. _Yeah... a guy who abandons his friends and spends half his life running from his past in one form or another. Great guy, all right. Wish we all knew a guy like that. Yeah, right._

"Thanks, Angie. See you later."

He walked downstairs quickly, wondering why Angie's words had chilled him so thoroughly. Of course, the possibility existed that he wouldn't see her again, after all. He didn't want to run into Vash. If he just found his grandfather, got advice on Sand, and left...

 _Doing what you did before. What you're so good at doing. Walking away, with Vash and Angie in danger._

Alex sighed and ran his hand over his face, wishing now that he hadn't shaved the beard.

 _Look, Nick, you're going to run into Tongari sooner or later. It isn't that big a world. May as well get it over with, huh?_

He was afraid it was inevitable. Ever since the second time he'd encountered Vash, drawn back into the whirlpool of the man's life after he thought he'd walked out of it forever, he had felt that his fate was somehow tied to Vash's. No matter how he tried to slip the bonds of that duty, he couldn't seem to walk away completely.

Outside, the suns were setting. Alex wheeled his motorcycle around back of the hotel and parked it next to a beat-up dune buggy, two tethered Thomases (the nearest one lowed at him mournfully) and a battered dirt bike with most of its paint scoured off by the ever-present sand. He patted his bike's seat affectionately and went off to find his grandfather, wondering, as he did so, how far ahead of him Vash was and how likely he was to run into him...

He had no trouble finding Alex Saverem's house. Saverem had lived in the same place, for all Alex knew, for the last 50 years. It was a tidy little cottage with its front yard beautifully landscaped with desert plants. Alex leaned over the gate. "Hello?" he called.

There was no answer. The windows of the little adobe house were dark. Saverem was either asleep or out somewhere.

Alex pushed the gate open, shut and latched it carefully behind him, and went to knock on the door. "Hello? Alex Saverem? Are you home?"

He waited, feeling a bit self-conscious standing in front of the door in his dusty black leather jacket and long hair. Sudden anger and frustration welled up inside him. He'd come halfway across the world to get here, and the old guy wasn't even home? Probably on vacation or something. Gone sandshark fishing... back in a week.

Alex pushed on the door. To his surprise, it swung gently open.

 _You don't even lock the door?_

Sudden apprehension caught in his throat. Maybe Alex Saverem hadn't taken a voluntary vacation... Alex flattened himself against the wall, his heart pounding. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The street was empty.

 _I wish I had a gun._ The thought came unbidden.

 _Well, I don't. If I die, I die. By all rights I shoulda been dead years ago anyhow._

Are you watching all this, God? he thought with heavy irony, and slipped through the half-open door.

The room inside appeared totally dark at first. Alex waited, heart pounding, until his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light filtering in from the street.

If there was someone in the house, they could not have possibly missed seeing and hearing him come in. Yet no shots were fired. He stood flat against the wall, beside the door, straining his ears for footsteps or rustling. Then he realized how silly he was being. He'd had a good view of the house all the way down the street, and the lights had been off the whole time. What had the intruders been doing, sitting in the dark? Not likely.

Still, he felt his way quietly along the wall until his hand encountered a lamp sitting on an end table. Electric? From what he knew of his grandfather, more than likely. He explored with his fingers, found a knob and twisted it.

Warm yellow light flooded the room. Alex instinctively tensed, ready to dive for cover -- not that there was any cover near him -- but the room was quite empty. He was alone.

He closed the door and then walked quietly around the house, looking for signs of a break-in or struggle. There were none. The room in which he'd entered seemed to be a sort of living room-study, dominated by a massive desk overflowing with stacks of papers and diagrams. Behind doors leading off the main room he found a small, tidy bedroom, a bathroom, and a large kitchen that appeared to also function as a workroom, judging from the strange devices piled on every surface. The kitchen windows looked out on a narrow backyard, landscaped as beautifully as the front yard, though its appearance was made more mundane by strings of laundry strung back and forth across it.

Alex gazed out at his grandfather's underwear flapping in the evening breeze, and started feeling like an intruder. Family or not, he really shouldn't be wandering around someone's house without their permission. Sighing, he returned to the main room.

Now what?

He'd seen no signs that Saverem expected to be gone for a long time. There was a loaf of bread sitting on the sink, as if it had just been taken out of the oven that afternoon and set out to cool. If he waited, the old man was bound to come home soon.

If he waited...

And equally likely, Tongari would show up looking for Saverem... and there would be a scene...

He sighed. _What should I do, sneak around town trying to avoid him? Dammit! What is it with that pointy-haired lunatic! Why'd he have to show up here, of all the lousy times?_

He didn't want to admit to himself... he couldn't... how nice it would be to see Vash again...

 _I'd better not leave Sand alone too long. Yeah, that's it. I'll go back to the hotel and check on her. Come back and see my grandfather first thing in the morning, and then leave town. Yeah._

He snapped off the light, but stood for a moment in the darkness, his eyes slowly adjusting.

The last time he'd been in this house, he'd been five years old...

Alex closed his eyes, hearing for a moment his little brother's laughter, his baby sister crying in his mother Karen's arms as she sat in this room, talking animatedly to her father. The clarity of the memory surprised him. He could see everything in the room as if it had been cast in crystal... the colors of the rugs... the sparkle in his mother's eyes... the color of his baby sister's hair...

He hadn't even known that he remembered it at all.

Caught up in that vision of a family long dead, the man who chose to call himself Alex Daniels crossed the room to Saverem's desk. It was dark, but he didn't need eyes to find his way. He touched the smooth wood of the desk, calling up more memories ... his grandfather picking him up, setting him on the edge of the desk... his legs much too short to reach the floor, swinging happily...

Everything had been so happy then.

Hardly aware of what he was doing, he leaned against the edge of the desk, in more or less the same spot where he'd sat all those years ago. He was startled to find tears threatening.

 _I haven't thought about them, any of them, in so long..._

Suddenly he was almost overwhelmed by the memories of all the people that he'd known, and loved, and then left behind in the course of his life. His parents... a laughing woman and a solemn man, seen through the golden haze of childhood. His brother and sister. The children in the orphanage. Angie.

And more recent faces... Vash... Meryl... Millie... even Sand...

Nicholas Wolfwood squeezed his eyes shut, but still the flood of memory continued, a litany of loss and betrayal. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, ground them against his eyeballs until the faces of those he'd loved and lost disappeared in a galaxy of red whorls.

 _I'm sick of this life. Wandering alone... it stinks. I want to have a family. I want kids of my own. I don't want to be alone anymore..._

 _Have I fallen too far... to ever redeem myself..._

 _Please, God, I just don't want to be alone any more._

But God didn't answer prayers. At least not his prayers. He'd learned that as a little child, praying for his parents to come back... as a teenager begging to be taken away from the life of killing that his uncle forced him into... even as an adult, kneeling in a church, bleeding to death, speaking to a God who never seemed to listen or respond.

 _I don't want to be alone..._

Something clattered outside.

Shit. Wolfwood took his hands from his eyes, still resting his hip on the edge of the desk. He could hear voices outside, too low to make out, and footsteps on the porch.

Hopefully it's Alex Saverem. Hopefully it's only Alex Saverem. Hopefully--

Wolfwood reached for the lamp, but there wasn't one within reach. Shit, he thought again. Now he really looked like a burglar. Hopefully Saverem didn't have a gun...

The door swung open, and he heard the tail end of a conversation --

"--should I? I have no enemies."

"Look, I've just been trying to _tell_ you--"

It was two people, but he couldn't see them in the gloom. The street outside was almost as dark as the room within. Wolfwood straightened up, trying to figure out what to say. _Hello, please don't shoot me, I know I look like a drug addict, but I'm actually harmless..._

The two men halted, becoming aware, by his movement, somehow that they weren't alone.

"And who might you be?" one of them said.

Wolfwood opened his mouth to reply, but the other man slammed the first one to the floor. "Get down!" he yelled, and Wolfwood heard a scrape and click that could only be some sort of weapon. Sounded big, too.

"You have a bodyguard, eh, Alex?" he said, oddly disappointed. "I wouldn't have expected it, but then I don't know you at all, do I?"

 _Mom always described her dad as a total pacifist. Things must be really desperate if he's bought himself a hired gun..._

"Who are you?" the gunman demanded, and there was something horribly familiar about that voice.

 _Aw, shit. Double shit. It better not be Tongari. Don't let it be Tongari..._

"I'm not armed," he said. "Look, turn on the light and you'll see. I know it looks sorta bad, but I just came to talk."

There was a hesitation. "Did Tony send you?"

"I don't know any Tony," Wolfwood said. "Turn on the light, okay? Let's talk face to face... Tongari."

He heard a sharp intake of breath, and knew, in one blinding instant, that he had been absolutely correct about the gunman's identity. And he felt something shiver into pieces inside himself -- the wall of false identity that he'd been so carefully building and protecting, all falling apart from one moment to the next.

 _It's all over. The running. The hiding. Time to face my past._

The light came on.


	20. Sin

"So," Lamia said softly, staring at the white suitcase. "The... The Genesis Machine is in there?"

Knives knelt beside it on the floor, staring at it. "I suppose..."

"The Plant told you it was there, huh?" Meryl said, retreating behind her customary sarcasm. "How did it know?"

Knives looked up at her mildly. "She."

"Whatever. How did _she_ know?"

"She can sense its presence. She knows what it is... they all do."

"And what exactly _is_ it, then?"

Knives stared at the suitcase, touching it gently with his long, delicate fingers. "Something capable of destroying... everything that she knows. That's what she told me."

"Destroying the world, you mean?" Meryl squeaked. _I knew it, I knew it_... But it was one thing to imagine the worst, from a safe distance, and quite another to be confronted with it.

"I don't know," Knives said, not entirely to her surprise. "The way _she_ perceives the world is very different from our understanding of it. This machine could unravel all of existence... or it could be totally harmless from our perspective. Who knows?"

His long fingers began to toy with the clasp of the suitcase.

"Woah! Hold it!" Meryl cried, shielding Ellie with her own body. "What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea what's in there? It could be poisonous! It could explode! It could jump out and attack your face! Are you nuts?"

"Hmm." Knives sat back on his heels. "You do have a point. Caution is probably in order."

 _"Probably?"_ Meryl took some deep breaths and tried to get her heart to slow down. "The sun must have fried your brains! You are holding a suitcase containing what just might be the biggest _bomb_ in the _world_ \--"

She suddenly remembered that she was yelling at Knives, and trailed off, sputtering.

Knives looked up at her and grinned. During their days of traveling in the desert, his face had lost much of the blank, vacant look it had had when she first encountered him and Lamia; now his eyes were almost as expressive as Vash's, and at the moment had started dancing with what she would have sworn was amusement -- but this was Knives! Since when did Knives get amused at anything other than massive amounts of human suffering?

"I like it when you forget to be afraid of me," he said. "You're funny when you're mad."

 _"Ooooh!"_ Meryl was infuriated beyond words. She turned away from Knives, looking for something to vent her frustration on, something that hopefully wasn't likely to blow up or kill her in retaliation. She settled for kicking the wall, then hopped around on one foot for a moment.

Turning around, once she could put weight on her foot again, she found Knives and Lamia -- and Ellie -- bent closely over the suitcase, examining it. Meryl gritted her teeth and hurried over to drag the protesting little girl to a safe distance. Never mind that they didn't know what it did, what it looked like or how to work it. Never mind that it could blow up in all their faces... did they care? Morons.

"It's so heavy," Lamia was saying. "That thing weighs a ton. What could possibly be in there?"

There was a short silence, then some little clicking and rattling noises.

"Look," Knives said. "It looks like this little clasp is supposed to come up..."

"No, I think it slides to the side."

"It seems to be more of a hinge, really..."

"Be careful," Lamia said. "Don't touch it."

There was a small "click" ... magnified a thousandfold in the sudden silence that followed.

"You touched it," Lamia said accusingly.

"Apparently it does slide back, after all," Knives said. He sounded fascinated, but there was a note of fear underneath, to Meryl's horror. Anything that could frighten KNIVES... _Dear Lord, please forgive me my sins, as I may be seeing You shortly,_ Meryl thought in a brief, fervent prayer. Drawn by perverse fascination -- after all, she reasoned, if it can blow up the world, there's no point in running -- but keeping Ellie behind her, she came a few steps closer.

The suitcase looked exactly the same, but then there was another "click."

"What'd you do that time?" Lamia demanded, her voice cracking with incipient panic.

"Nothing," Knives said. "I didn't touch it that time."

Knives and Lamia wasted no time jumping up and scrambling backwards to join Meryl.

 _As if it matters,_ Meryl thought. _Ten feet, ten thousand feet, ten thousand iles... it doesn't matter how far away we get. Oh, they've really gone and done it this time..._

She clung to Ellie, and suddenly, for no reason at all, thought of Vash.

 _Oh, GREAT. I'm going to die and the last thing I see will be that pointy-headed idiot's face._

Vash...

I never got the chance to tell you --

"Look!" Lamia shrieked, interrupting Meryl's thoughts. The girl had jumped about two feet in the air and whipped her rifle in front of her. "It moved!"

It _had_ moved. The side panels of the suitcase had begun to fold out. Then more of it unfolded, and more, like a piece of paper gently bending itself into a lovely origami butterfly. But this was no butterfly...

Meryl's jaw dropped when she began to realize what it was unfolding into. She was positive her face had gone chalk white. Looking at the other two adults, she saw that neither of them seemed particularly astonished -- apprehensive, maybe, but there was no recognition on their faces.

 _Well, of course Knives wouldn't reveal anything. Either he's really got amnesia, so he's never seen it before, or he's lying and he's known what it was all along. But I'm positive Lamia's seen it --_

...no, wait! She never did, did she? It was covered up during the whole time she was with us ... Wolfwood used Vash's gun...

Hardly aware of what she was doing, Meryl released Ellie and walked forward, towards the Genesis Machine, which had finished unfolding and now lay quiescent upon the bare metal. Behind her, there was a small gasp from Knives, a strangled cry of "Meryl!" from Lamia. Meryl ignored them. She knelt beside the great silver-white cross and touched it. The metal was still warm from the transformation.

"Meryl!" Lamia cried. "What are you doing?"

"It's all right," Meryl said. She had to keep a tight grip on herself, or she was going to start laughing hysterically, or crying, or both. "It belonged to a friend of mine."

But looking at it closely, she saw it wasn't actually Wolfwood's Cross Punisher, after all. It was very similar, but perhaps slightly bigger, and double-barrelled.

She looked up to find Knives bending over her, his pale hair hanging down around his face. "Have you seen this before?" he asked.

 _I thought I did -- and you should, too!_ she wanted to say. But she didn't. "It just reminded me of something a friend of mine had. But it isn't. I don't know what it is."

None of them could figure out how to get it to fold up again, so Knives picked up the thing, with exceeding care, and they started back the way they had come. Meryl got another stomach-wrenching shock when she looked back at Knives, carrying the big cross. He looked so much like Vash had, when he walked away to confront Knives that final time...

Meryl clenched her hands into fists, and then had to apologize to Ellie, who was holding her hand.

 _This is driving me crazy. I don't know who to trust. I don't know what to think. I don't know where Vash is, I don't know where Millie is... and I don't know WHO Wolfwood is..._

Before leaving, she had looked close enough to read the names inscribed on the other capsules. Karen Saverem Wolfwood and Steve Anthony Wolfwood were the adults. Sydney James Wolfwood and Rem Saverem Wolfwood were the little kids.

 _They must be related to Wolfwood somehow... and maybe to that Rem woman we saw in the picture. I KNOW Vash mentioned her. Someone he knew on the ships, wasn't she?_

Even Knives looked relieved when they were out of the bone-strewn hallway. Lamia and Ellie were getting hungry, though Meryl thought she'd be happy enough if she never ate again. Knives showed them the way back to the door, still carrying the cross like a weird appendage. Then he turned to go back in.

"Aren't you coming with us?" Lamia said.

Knives shook his blond head. "I want to try to figure this out. Maybe the Plant can help."

And Meryl said, shocking herself, "At least come have something to eat first."

 _What's WRONG with me? Knives is the Enemy._

...isn't he?

Knives looked at her for a long moment, his blue eyes unreadable. Then he smiled slightly, and said, "Well, I suppose a few minutes wouldn't hurt."

 _I just wanted to keep him from figuring out the Genesis Machine,_ Meryl told herself as they walked back to the campsite. _Yeah, that's it. That's all._

They made dinner and ate. The white cross was propped up beside Knives, and Meryl's eyes kept stealing to it nervously. Maybe it wasn't the Genesis Machine after all. Maybe the Plant, or Knives, was wrong. It looked so much like Wolfwood's cross. And Wolfwood's cross hadn't folded up, had it?

Her eyes also kept stealing to Knives. In the red glow of their campfire, with his blond hair down and lying loose and sweaty on his neck, his pale coloring looked more normal. He might just be an ordinary young man, eating dinner with his family... She watched him tease Ellie with another candy bar, finally relenting and letting the little girl have it when Ellie threatened to kick him in the shins. Lamia scolded both of them through a mouthful of food, but she was obviously struggling not to grin.

 _My gosh, they do look like a family._

 _Am I listening to Knives more these days? Am I believing what he has to say?_

It's just because the bastard's so damned convincing.

No... it's because I believe him. I do believe he's lost his memory. And maybe... lost something else as well. Something that made him Knives, the Knives we all hated and feared. I don't understand it, but I feel as if it's true.

Meryl stared into the fire, angry with herself and, by extension, with Knives. _What's happening to me? Since when have I believed in things like that? I never used to believe in anything that can't be touched, measured, counted..._

But she had changed a lot from the brash, self-confident Meryl Stryfe who had set off into the world, six years ago, convinced that she could find a dangerous outlaw and change his ways simply because the company said it had to be done. Meryl wondered what she would think of her younger self, if she met her now.

 _She'd probably get on my nerves as much as Lamia does._

Knives wiped his mouth and stood up.

"You're going back?" Lamia said.

He nodded. "I'll be careful. I don't intend to unleash anything. But I hope the Plant can help me understand the Genesis Machine... I don't think we'll be safe until I do."

"Safe from what?" Meryl said. Suddenly it seemed vitally important that she ask the question -- and shocking to herself that she had never thought to ask it before. "You've pushed us all the way out here so you can find the Genesis Machine and keep it safe -- but from what I saw, it's been safely hidden all these years. It's probably safer out here than with any of us."

Knives looked down at the ground.

"There's something I haven't told you."

 _Oh, here it comes._

"There's a man," Knives said, not meeting their eyes. "A ... bad man. The Plant doesn't know who or what he is, but she says she can feel the menace radiating off him like energy from the sun. He's been coming out here, to this ship. She is afraid he will find the Genesis Machine, so afraid that she finally managed to contact me... and bring me here."

Meryl looked at Lamia, staring up at Knives -- her Vash the Stampede -- with wide, trusting eyes. Meryl wished she could hate him for putting that look in Lamia's eyes. It would be so much easier if she could only hate him...

Meryl stood up.

"A bad man," she said.

Knives nodded, staring at the ground.

"What _sort_ of a bad man?"

"The Plant doesn't know," Knives mumbled. "All humans look alike to her."

"And _you_ \-- you brought us here, knowing that someone comes out here, might be here, that even the Plant is afraid of -- you talked a girl who trusts you into bringing you here, and brought along a little child, and _me_ \-- you wanted us to trust you, on the basis of your word alone -- but you never even told us the whole truth."

Staring blindly at the ground, Knives nodded.

"Miss Meryl, please stop." Lamia sounded near tears.

"No. I won't stop. I want to know why he thinks he can be our friend, without even telling us the truth about anything. I want to know why--"

"Miss Meryl, stop!" Lamia cried fiercely. "I'm sure that if Mr. Vash didn't tell us, he had a good reason--"

 _"He isn't Vash, you stupid child!"_ Meryl screamed. _"I've told you and told you! He's Knives! And he's evil!"_

There was a long silence following her outburst. Then Ellie began to whimper. Lamia put her arm around the child and glared up at Meryl. Knives was looking away, not moving, not speaking.

Meryl felt her anger draining away, and tried to grab for it, tried to hold onto it. She need the strength that anger gave her. She'd never felt so alone, so unsure of herself.

"I need air," she mumbled, and whirled away from them, walking into the desert dusk.

"Meryl!" Lamia called after her, but Meryl kept walking. She strode onward, paying no attention to where she was going, her arms piston-pumping at her sides. She stopped walking only because it was getting so dark that she was in danger of falling into a ravine.

Looking back, she could not see the glow of the fire. Twists and turns of the canyon had hidden it from her.

 _It'd just be the perfect end to a perfect day if you storm off in a snit and get lost out here... wouldn't it, Meryl?_

Sighing, she sank down onto the sand, folding up her legs and resting her arms on her knees. She was no longer angry, no longer really hurt... just sad and empty-feeling. She tilted back her head and looked up at the stars.

She hadn't really looked at the stars in years. When she was a child, when her parents would fight, or her hamster died, or sometimes just because it was too hot to sleep, she would sneak out and lie on the roof, picking out familiar constellations and making up old ones. Now she found all those old familiar sights... the two bright Twins in the southern sky ... the Ship to the north, the clusters of the Lady overhead.

Meryl felt the night breeze ruffle her hair, and slowly her stress and torn emotions seeped out of her body into the sand.

 _He could have told us, at least. The jerk. What else is he hiding, I wonder?_

I should at least go back and apologize to Lamia.

One part of her hoped the brat didn't come looking for her... but the other side of her, the soft and hidden side, listened for footsteps in the sand, and wanted to weep when no one came.

Lonely. That's it. That's what this feeling was. She was lonely.

Meryl had never really been lonely before. She wasn't the sort who kept in touch with people. Usually she was just too busy. Sometimes over the past few years she'd found herself thinking wistfully of Millie, but she just found another form to fill out, another report to file.

There were no reports here, and no forms to take her mind off her thoughts... just the silent, accusing stars.

 _I'm all alone in the world. I have no kids, and I haven't seen my parents in years. The only real friends I ever had are all gone... scattered... dead..._

 _So why am I lying here like an idiot, feeling sorry for myself? That's how you get yourself into these messes, Meryl old girl. Get up, brush off the sand, bite your pride and go tell Lamia you're sorry for yelling at her._

It was a plan of action, at least -- not typed up on a yellow form, but something tangible she could hold onto. Meryl jumped up and straightened her clothes, and headed back to the campsite.

She didn't have trouble finding it -- the moons were bright, and she'd left clear tracks in the loose sand. When she got back, though, Lamia was wrapped in a blanket beside the banked fire, Ellie in her arms, their breathing slow and even.

Meryl was tempted to kick Lamia awake so she could apologize to her, but she had a notion that such an apology wouldn't be much appreciated. Staring down at the two of them, she felt a twinge, thinking of Ellie's warm weight nestled in her own arms in the car.

 _They didn't even worry about me. They didn't even come looking for me._

She'd never felt so alone in her life.

 _I should go to sleep, too._

But she wasn't at all tired... and looking up at the ship's bulk, she saw small glimmers and flickers in that great darkness. The Plant was awake, and so was Knives. Doing God knows what to the Genesis Machine.

She didn't really feel like seeing Knives at the moment, let alone apologizing to him... but maybe it was time to sit him down and figure out what was going on. Who knows what other things he'd been keeping from her.

Feeling a little better in the grip of righteous indignation, Meryl strode off towards the door in the side of the ship. "Wolfwood," she whispered, typing the name, and the door slid open to admit her.

The corridors within were well lit, and to her own surprise, she didn't have as much trouble navigating around as she'd thought she might. After a few false turns, she managed to find the Plant chamber. Except for the glowing light bulb in the center, though, it was empty. Knives was nowhere to be found.

Meryl wandered out into the middle of the floor and stood under the gently glowing light bulb, stared up into it. Was that the graceful curve of a leg, the ripple of hair made all out of light? As her eyes adjusted to the subtle gradations of light, she could indeed make out an almost-human figure, flickering just at the edge of her ability to perceive.

 _Is Vash really ... one of those?_

She reached up, hesitantly, and touched the light bulb. It was warm.

"Hello," she said, feeling foolish.

"She can't understand you."

Meryl jumped and spun around. Knives was standing in the doorway, watching her.

"God! Don't sneak up on a person!"

"Sorry," Knives said, and looked down. "Lamia says I move too quietly. I don't know any other way to move."

Meryl shrugged, and took her hand self-consciously down from the Plant's bubble. Knives came to join her beneath it.

"Does... she... know we're here?" Meryl asked after a moment.

"Not really. Creatures like us are incomprehensible to her... creatures bound up in time, bound up in physical flesh. Our reality touches hers only in places."

"I don't understand," Meryl said.

Knives smiled a faint, tired, sad smile. "Neither do I. That's only what she's told me. But she's different from her own kind, too. She's been isolated here for a long time, sometimes sleeping, sometimes waking. She's come to take more of an interest in the mortal world than her kind normally do."

He looked away, then looked back at Meryl, his eyes colorless in the soft glow of the Plant. "I... am sorry. For keeping things from you."

Meryl shrugged. The absolute last thing she wanted at the moment was Knives apologizing to her, but she had to admit that he'd actually done something that needed an apology. Unfortunately she didn't want to accept it, but... _There's a reason you're all alone._ "I don't understand why. Because you thought we wouldn't come if we knew the truth?"

"No. It isn't that at all. I'm just -- so bad at talking to people. Interacting with people. I didn't know if you'd believe me. I didn't know if the words would come out all wrong and you'd hate me."

He was so eager to please, to be liked. And she could no longer convince herself that it was all an act.

Knives stared at her while she tried to sort out her thoughts, her feelings. Finally he said, "Meryl... you know who I really am, don't you? You knew me in the time I can't remember."

"I.... I thought I knew who you are," Meryl admitted. "But I'm not sure anymore."

"Tell me. Please." He looked up at the Plant above them. "Am I -- human?"

"I don't think so," Meryl said.

He let his breath out in a long, long sigh. "I was afraid of that."

"You really, truly don't remember?"

"I don't remember anything. The first memories I have are confusing snatches -- being in the desert, being thirsty, tired, sick. I think... now... that the Plant actually had something to do with that. She's been reaching out, all this time, trying to find a receptive mind. She found mine, but I... don't know what happened before that. Lamia found me alongside the road, like she told you. She fed me and gave me water. I didn't know how to talk -- Lamia had to teach me."

"You certainly picked it up quickly," Meryl said, and then winced inwardly. She really hadn't meant to sound argumentative. It just happened!

Knives looked away. "I seem to learn things quickly. I asked _her_ about that --" He glanced up briefly at the Plant -- "but she didn't know what I meant by _learning._ Apparently her kind acquire knowledge some other way. So many things in our world are strange to her. And to me. Meryl, please. I need to know who I am. What I am."

"You won't like it." Meryl took a deep breath; she couldn't believe she was about to say this. "Listen. Forget about it. If you really don't remember, you're better off not knowing. You seem like a nice person." _I can't believe I said that..._ "Lamia is your friend." _And maybe ... I am, too._ "Just make a new life for yourself, and forget that you ever had another one."

"I wish I could," Knives said. He turned his face upward, and gazed at the Plant. "I wish I could be like them... never wondering, never wanting to know. They have no past. They have no future. They only have the eternal _now._ But I can't. Meryl, put yourself in my place for a minute. If you woke up without your memory, wouldn't you want to know who you used to be?"

"I think it's more than lost memory," Meryl said slowly. She'd done a lot of thinking about this, during their time in the desert, comparing Knives as she knew him to the Knives that Vash had described. "I think there's some piece of you that's actually missing. Maybe whatever's missing is whatever made Knives the way he was. Maybe if I tell you about him, it'll bring that piece back."

 _And we'll be enemies again... and I don't want that._

Knives shook his head. "Meryl, I know that I've done terrible things. I knew by the way that you reacted to me, when we first met. I need to know what I've done, if only so I can find a way to atone."

"I ... don't think you can atone for the things you did." _But Vash wouldn't say that, would he? Vash believes that no one is beyond redemption._

"Please, Meryl. Tell me. I have to know."

So she told him. She gave him the bits and pieces that she knew: things Vash had told her, things others had told her, things she'd figured out for herself. She saw him grow pale and lean against the light bulb for support -- and she wanted to stop, thinking about how Vash would react to news of the sort that she was now giving Knives. But he'd asked. And he was right. He deserved to know.

"I -- I wanted to destroy...."

"Every human being on this world." Did he believe her? Could anyone believe something like that? It sounded so silly, like something a villain out of a child's tale would do. No words could adequately express the horror of standing in the desert dawn, knowing that if Vash failed to stop his brother, the sun might not rise for anyone, ever again.

Knives reached up and touched the light bulb -- Meryl was reminded oddly of a frightened child reaching out to its mother for comfort.

"Are you sorry I told you?" she asked, very quietly.

Knives looked over at her and smiled -- a tired smile, full of pain, but the same sweet smile that she'd gotten to know in the desert. If her telling him the truth had changed anything, anything at all, she couldn't tell.

"No," he said. "I needed to know. And now I can start figuring out how to put the pieces together again."

Meryl looked away from him. She couldn't meet those too-Vashlike eyes. Suddenly she realized something.

"Where's the Genesis Machine? Isn't it with you?"

"No. I couldn't bring it in here. The Plant is too afraid of it. It's in the medical bay."

"Have you found out anything about it?"

He shook his head. "Not really. It just seems like a gun. I can't imagine what the maker could have been hiding." He looked at her hopefully. "Maybe... it would help if you looked at it? You said you'd seen something similar."

"Yes, but the... other one... it was just a gun, too. I thought..."

She followed Knives out of the Plant chamber and they walked down the corridors to the place he called a medical bay. She was somehow unsurprised to find that it was the same place she and Lamia theorized must be some strange kind of hospital.

"So this _is_ a hospital."

Knives nodded. "Of a sort. It's also a place for scientific experimentation. A lot of the equipment has been removed by the man the Plant fears, but I've managed to get some of it working again."

"How do you know how to do this?" Meryl asked, feeling her throat catch in involuntary fear at seeing the Genesis Machine surrounded with glowing wires and gadgets.

"My hands know," Knives said simply.

Meryl stared at those slim, long-fingered hands as they deftly moved over the machinery, making adjustments here, turning a knob there. _What else do your hands know? Do they remember how to kill?_

The night slipped slowly past outside the ship, but inside there was no night, just the artificial day of the ship's lights. Meryl assisted Knives as best she could as he examined the Genesis Machine from top to bottom.

"These readings are odd. It seems to be just a gun, made out of metal. But there are these interesting anomalies--"

She never found out what the anomalies were. The lights flickered, and Knives stumbled and put his hand to his head.

"What?" Meryl said. "What is it?"

"The Plant. She's upset." Knives looked up at Meryl in alarm. "She says... the bad man is here."

Meryl stumbled backwards, reaching under her cloak for two derringers. "Here? Where here?"

"Outside the ship."

Their eyes met, and Meryl saw the horror that she felt reflected in his eyes.

"Ellie and Lamia are outside the ship," Meryl whispered.

She started to run from the room, then realized that Knives wasn't with her, and turned to see him staring at the Genesis Machine.

"It _is_ a weapon..." he said musingly.

"Don't even think about it! Do you want this 'bad man' getting his hands on it? You want a weapon? Here!" She threw him one of her derringers, choking down one small part of herself that screamed in horror, _You're arming KNIVES?_ and drew another gun to replace that one. "Come on," she added.

They raced down corridors, clambered over twisted folds of metal. Meryl chanted over and over in her head, _Please don't let us be too late..._

Wind blowing down the corridors alerted them that something was wrong before they got to the door. Where the smooth surface of the closed door should have been, they saw a field of stars. The door had been opened and wedged with a rock.

Meryl realized belatedly that the Plant might have been able to do something -- lock the door somehow. It was too late now.

"He's in the ship," she whispered, staring at Knives, wide-eyed. "He's in here. With us. He'll find the Genesis Machine -- Knives, I was wrong, you should have brought it with you, we have to go back --"

Knives gestured to the door. "We've got to find Lamia and Ellie first. Hopefully they hid, or he didn't see them. They might not realize anything is wrong."

"We'll search for them first, then," Meryl decided. But she had only taken a few steps towards the door when a sudden, piercing scream echoed from deep inside the ship.

Both of them whirled around.

"Lamia!" Meryl cried. "Damn it, Knives! Ask the Plant! Where is he? Where's Lamia?"

"She can't answer that kind of question. She doesn't understand 'where.' She can't tell people apart--"

Meryl seized him by the front of his cloak. "Forget about what she does or doesn't know! Just ask her!"

Knives shivered and closed his eyes, his face turning inward. When he opened his eyes again, he had a look of great surprise on his face. "She says they're in -- Well, it's difficult to explain the way she says it, but in essence, it's where we found the Genesis Machine."

"Well, come on! What are you waiting for!"

Meryl surged past him into the bowels of the ship. As she ran, gun in each hand, she thought: _In the chamber of bones. With Wolfwood's family. But why -- why would he take them THERE?_

 

* * *

 

Lamia had been sleeping, dreaming of her mother and sister. It was a happy dream, back when Daddy was alive, before thing started to get so bad. When she woke, gasping, it took her a moment to orient herself and realize what had woke her. Then she discovered that what had woke her was the fact that she couldn't breathe. She doubled over, gasping for air -- and could breathe again, her lungs unfreezing.

"Bit of a sudden way to wake up, but it gets the blood pumping," said a soft voice nearby.

Lamia sat bolt upright, reaching for her rifle. But her hand stopped halfway to the gun. It felt like an invisible hand was holding her.

Ellie ... where's Ellie? Who is this sonuvabitch? Dammit, I shoulda stood watch, I'm getting careless --

The speaker moved slowly into her field of vision. He wasn't a tall man, but Lamia got the distinct impression that he -- well, it sounded absurd to say that he radiated evil, but that was exactly the impression she got. His eyes glimmered in the moonlight. As he moved farther forward, she could see his hands, and in one of his hands -- Lamia choked with fear and fury. He was holding Ellie by the hand. The little girl shrank away from him, terrified beyond tears.

"Who are you, girl?" the man said. "What are you doing here?"

"Go to h--" Lamia was choked off in midsentence by a surge of horrific pain. Her body was being forced to twist in ways it was never designed to move. She could feel her joints popping, stretching to the breaking point -- She screamed in pain.

"Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? Who are you?"

"M--my name is Lamia," she managed to choke out.

"That's a good girl." The pressure eased and she slumped to the sand, relieved beyond measure. Her body ached, but it didn't feel as if any permanent damage had been done.

"And what are you doing here?"

"I--I..." The lie came glibly to her lips. "I was traveling with my little sister. I'm a tech scavenger, it's how I make my living. We'd heard about a really good haul out here that nobody knew about, so I decided to see if I could find it. But I can't figure out how to get in."

She was going over the story in her head, trying to find fault with it, when one of her arms was cruelly twisted behind her back. She cried out again.

"Truth, is it?"

"Y--Yes!" Lamia managed.

"Are you alone, girl? That's quite a lot of food in the car for two kids."

"We --Ah! Please stop!"

"Are you alone?"

"Yes! We take food when we can get it, Mister. Do you know what it's like to be hungry?"

She seemed to have said the right thing, for the pressure eased up and she fell forward, sobbing with relief.

"Get up," the man said. "I didn't break anything, and I need you to carry something for me."

Lamia got to her feet, assisted with little boosts from whatever force seemed to be controlling her. A dark bundle lay at the man's feet. Approaching, Lamia smelled a sickly-sweetish scent coming from it. She suddenly didn't want to know what was in that bundle, or to come anywhere near it.

"Pick it up. Do it now. I haven't got all day."

Lamia bent over and, skin crawling with revulsion, got her arms under the bundle and lifted. It was wrapped in a coarse blanket. She could feel rigid parts and horridly soft parts. She knew what it must be... she just didn't want to admit it to herself.

 _This is the guy who stacked those bones. This is another of his victims. And now he's going to kill me and Ellie too._

"If you hurt Ellie, I won't lift a finger to help you," Lamia snapped. "So you better not."

"Your sister? Don't worry. As long as you do what I tell you, no one will get hurt."

His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence. Taking a closer look, Lamia saw that his skin was drawn tightly over fading bruises on his face. His lips were cracked, and there were ugly dark shadows under his eyes. The guy looked half dead.

 _That must be why he wants me to carry this for him... because he's too weak to carry it himself. Maybe his car broke down or something. He looks like he's been wandering in the desert. I wonder if he's not the killer at all? Maybe just somebody driven half mad by the heat? This ... body... I'm carrying could be his wife or something. Maybe she died of starvation and thirst in the desert, and her death drove him mad_.

But he didn't look mad, or if he was, it was a cold, calm type of madness, infinitely more terrifying than if he'd been screaming or running in circles.

"Walk," he commanded, so she did, carrying the drooping thing in her arms. The man walked behind her with Ellie. Lamia could hear the little girl making tiny whimpering sounds in her throat.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," she said, inwardly pleading with the girl to not mention Meryl, to not mention Vash. As long as Meryl and Vash stayed free, they could shoot this awful man and rescue the two of them, just like Vash had rescued her real sister.

The man directed her straight to the door in the side of the ship, and without hesitation typed in the code. Lamia's heart sank. So much for him being a lost traveler. He definitely had been here before.

 _Those tracks we saw. How could we have been so stupid?_

The door opened, and light flooded out. The man hesitated in surprise, then turned on Lamia. "You said you hadn't opened the door?"

"No," Lamia said, trying to look shocked.

The man stared upward, presumably towards the Plant. "I wonder what could have woken it..." He shook his head and wedged a rock in the door to keep it open. "Move, girl."

 _He doesn't know about Meryl and Vash and the Genesis Machine. I think. I hope. I guess. Oh, I hate this!_

Deeper and deeper they went into the ship. Lamia started to have a dreadful suspicion where they were going, and her suspicion was confirmed when they entered the corridor of bones. Immediately, he noticed the pile of jawbones that Lamia had knocked over earlier that day. He knelt beside them, not touching anything, and looked up at Lamia. "Haven't been in here, have you?"

Lamia shook her head fervently.

"You're lying," the man said quietly, and Lamia screamed as her legs were twisted until her feet were almost pointed backwards. Her hands tightened convulsively on the thing she carried. It was horribly squishy. Ellie began to cry.

"No... no..." Lamia gasped, shivering with pain. Once again the pressure let up, and she would have fallen if that invisible hand hadn't held her up.

"I need you to be able to walk," the man said quietly. "I'll have the story from you soon. Come."

He started walking again, dragging the sobbing Ellie. Lamia followed him quickly, her legs shaky but intact. She just wanted to get this over with and put down this horrid thing she was carrying. Yet she was also terrified, knowing that things would get much worse as soon as he no longer needed her.

Somehow she wasn't surprised when they stopped in front of the capsules containing the intact bodies of the family they had seen earlier. Lamia felt her heart drop to her toes when she saw that Knives hadn't put back the cover to the space where he'd found the Genesis Machine. The dark space yawned behind the old woman's casket. The man stared at this for a moment or two, leaned forward and peered into it, then looked back at Lamia. For the first time since she'd woken up, she saw him smile -- and that smile was like something from a nightmare.

"I will definitely need to hear this story from you, little girl," he said, and those quiet words promised pain, promised terror.

Lamia had spent most of her life being resigned to the possibility of her own death, and now that the possibility had become a probability, she found that she could think much more clearly than she would have believed possible. She cast her eyes about, looking for an escape, but there was none.

"Bring it here," the man said to her.

Lamia walked forward obediently with the bundle, and he took it from her and began to unwrap the blanket. The smell of decay grew stronger. "Honey, don't look," Lamia said to Ellie, not sure if the girl would listen, but knowing she had to try -- because she had the suspicion that whatever was in that blanket was something that she really would rather not see.

Actually it wasn't as bad as she had feared. It was the body of a boy, older than Ellie but probably not yet a teenager. He had been dead for a few days in the desert sun, so the corpse wasn't pretty, but she had seen much worse in the alleys where she'd lived.

Ellie gave a little whimper, and Lamia knew she'd peeked, though she wasn't sure if the girl was really old enough to understand what she was looking at.

The man opened the capsule next to the old woman's -- not the empty one beside the others, but the one on the far side, where a row of empty, undamaged capsules stretched back into the darkness. He pushed the body in, and closed it. The child's bloated face rested against the glass. The effect was rather obscene and Lamia had to look away. After a moment, though, she looked back to see that the man had drawn a small penknife and was scratching at the metal nameplate over the capsule. He'd let go of Ellie, and she retreated to cling to Lamia's legs.

The man finished scraping the metal -- it looked like he'd carved a name, but it was difficult to tell -- and then turned the force of his cold yellow eyes upon Lamia, who shrank away. "You're probably wondering who these people are," he said.

"Actually --" she began.

"I don't mind telling you. Unlike you, I am not a liar," the man said, and chuckled. He touched the glass over the old woman's face. "Her name is Nadia. She was my one true love. Have you ever had a one true love, little girl? You don't look old enough."

"You're wrong," Lamia said, thinking of Vash. "I have."

The man raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really. Well, then you must surely understand that love, like all other things, decays under the desert sun. Nadia abandoned me, as women always will. I keep her here to remind myself of her betrayal, to think upon whenever I am tempted to trust another human being."

He tapped the glass over the faces of the man and woman. "Her grandson and his wife... and their misbegotten descendants. I have tried to bring the whole family here to this place. Together, these poor ones who never should have existed. I have everyone but one of the children, who escaped. He is probably dead by now, but I still leave the capsule open in the hopes that one day, he will be able to join his family. I hate nothing worse than seeing a family torn apart."

This guy's nuts, Lamia thought. Bonkers. More than just a few needles short of a cactus...

"Now this ..." He gestured to the recently dead boy. "The family is expanding, you see. This child is the nephew of the wife. I couldn't let him be all alone. It is only right and proper that he should rest here. Soon, I'll have his grandfather as well. The whole group will be together, and together, they can watch their world die at my master's hands."

He turned slowly, riveting Lamia with his cold stare.

"Now, it's your turn to tell the truth."

 _Oh god oh god oh god..._ Lamia thought, trying hopelessly to shield Ellie. _Now I'm going to die._

 

* * *

 

"Meryl! Slow down!" Knives seized her shoulder, almost causing her to run into a wall. "If he hears you coming --"

Knives was right; there was no way to run quietly through the field of bones. Still, Meryl chafed at the delay as they picked their way along. She kept thinking about the pain-filled scream she'd heard. There had been only one scream... did that mean the girls were still alive? Or had the stranger killed one of them in a way that left no opportunity to scream...?

 _Stop it,_ Meryl scolded herself. _Lamia and Ellie are fine. I have to believe that._

Knives held up a hand to stop her, a moment before Meryl, too, heard voices ahead of them. No... one voice. A man's voice.

They crept forward and peered over the stacked bones. Meryl felt relief surge through her when she saw Lamia standing with Ellie clinging to her legs. _They're all right..._

The slim, wiry man standing in front of the capsules containing Wolfwood's family, talking to the girls, didn't look like someone who would frighten a Plant. He could almost have been an accountant or something... well, an accountant in a black bodysuit, which was kind of odd, but he still didn't look like such a bad person.

The man took a step towards Lamia, and Lamia shrank away, trying to protect Ellie. Meryl couldn't hear his words, but obviously he'd made some kind of threat. She remembered the scream, and thought, _This guy has got to be more dangerous than he looks._

Still, the only weapon she could see was a small knife in his hand, and he didn't even hold it like he knew how to use it. _This won't be so bad..._

Meryl stood up, pointing both guns at him. "You! Freeze! Drop the knife and step away from those girls!"

Lamia twisted her head around, and Meryl saw, in surprise, the despair on her face. "Oh, Miss Meryl, no! Run! Run, quickly!"

 _What did he do to frighten her so badly? He doesn't even have a gun!_

The man made no move to drop the knife. A slow smile spread across his face, and suddenly he didn't look like an accountant anymore.

"Well, well," he said. "Meryl Stryfe. It's a small world."

"How do you know my name?" Meryl demanded. "Have we met?"

"A long time ago... in a different lifetime, you might say," the man said, still with that quiet smile.

"Quit talking in riddles! In case you're too stupid to notice, I happen to have two guns pointed at your head, buddy! That's two more than you have!"

"What? These guns?"

As Meryl stared in horror, the guns slowly began to turn around in her hands, the metal slipping through her helpless fingers, until the barrels were both pointed at her head. She tried to drop them, but she couldn't move.

She couldn't move.

Oh, no... no... she'd only met one person who could do this sort of thing... but it couldn't be him, no, please, it couldn't be...

It was like being in a nightmare. She felt her own fingers begin to tighten on the triggers. She couldn't even move her eyes. All she could do was stare down the barrels of her own guns, wondering if she'd be able to see the bullet leave the chamber... or if it would all happen too fast...

"Meryl!" _Oh, that stupid..._ Knives had jumped out of hiding. He wasn't even using the derringer she'd given him -- instead, to her shock and horror, he dropped it and seized one of her guns in each hand, wrenching them out of her unresponsive fingers. Meryl gave a cry of pain -- it felt like he'd broken both her trigger fingers. The guns discharged into the ceiling, the echoes rolling back and forth down the great open space.

Meryl discovered that she could move again and fell to her knees, gasping. She raised her head to yell at Knives for coming out of hiding, half expecting to find that the stranger had stabbed him -- but instead, she saw something much more bizarre.

The stranger, like Meryl, had fallen to his knees. He was staring at Knives with astonishment, awe. "Master," he whispered.

And Meryl realized... if this guy was actually Legato, in some weird inexplicable way, then Legato served Knives...

"What?" Knives said.

He had that open, confused Vash-look. Meryl could have strangled him, in spite of the fact that he'd just saved her life. _Play along! Play along!_ she wanted to scream at him, but of course she couldn't without giving everything away.

But the man she could only think of as Legato was getting to his feet, staring at Knives. "No," he said softly. "You're not Him. You're only an empty shell... and now you will die with the rest of them."

He raised his hand, pointed it toward Knives. Meryl could see by the tension in Knives's shoulders that he was afraid, but he started walking towards Legato.

And Legato lowered his hand, the first hints of fear creeping into his voice. "Why -- can't I affect you?"

"Because ... I am your Master," Knives said. "I order you to let these women go."

He sounded as if he was reading from a poorly prepared script. _Aargh,_ Meryl thought. _He's a worse liar than Vash._

"You are not the Master. You're an impostor. A liar." But Legato's hand hesitated, and Meryl thought, _Whatever he does, however he controls people, it really doesn't work on Knives! And he doesn't know how to deal with it._

Legato reached out and seized Ellie's wrist. "Come no closer, false one. Or I'll kill her. Do you want to watch her little eyes pop out of her head? She'll be conscious for the whole thing, I assure you."

Knives stopped in his tracks. _Don't let him scare you, Knives,_ Meryl thought, her hands clenched so tightly that her fingernails cut bloody crescents in her palms. _You're the only hope we've got._

"I command you to release that girl!" Knives snapped, and Meryl saw Legato's hand falter on Ellie's arm. _He's been conditioned to obey that voice. He doesn't have a choice._

"I can't kill you," Legato said, his voice shaking. "I can't kill you! I can't control you! But -- follow me, false master! Follow me, or I'll break this girl's neck. Control... control is always in the hands of those who know how to exercise it."

"I'll come with you willingly if you release all of them," Knives said.

He would, Meryl realized. He really would.

Legato shook his head, his breath hissing between his teeth. "Oh, no. Not a chance. This --" He shook Ellie, who whimpered. "--this is the only control I have over you, and I'm not letting her go. Follow me!"

Dragging Ellie, with Knives walking helplessly in their wake, he strode past Lamia, past Meryl. Try as she might, Meryl could not budge an inch, and since she didn't hear any noise from Lamia's direction, it appeared the girl was frozen as well.

Knives looked back at Meryl, and his sad blue eyes seemed to say, _I'm sorry. I'm sorry I failed._

And Meryl wanted to say, _But you didn't fail! I'm alive! Lamia's alive! Just hang on... we'll find you and Ellie both. We'll save you._

She didn't know how much of that made it across the gulf between them. Knives turned his head away, and the sound of their footsteps on metal faded away.

Time stretched out like a long, long thread, measured only by Meryl's short, hard gasps for breath as she struggled to break free of the iron-hard control holding her in place. Sweat ran down her face and dripped from her nose. Then suddenly she was free. The shock was so great that she fell forward, and had to catch herself on her hands.

Picking herself up, she saw Lamia similarly collecting herself.

"Are you all right?" Meryl asked. "Can you walk?"

Lamia nodded wordlessly.

"Come on. Quick. But quiet."

She picked up her dropped guns and gave them to Lamia, drawing more for herself. _I'm a one-woman armory,_ she thought, and almost laughed, the hysterical laughter that comes from great tension.

The two of them crept through the field of bones. The silence hung upon them like a shroud of death. Meryl was sure that they'd come around a corner to find Knives dead, Ellie dead, and Legato standing over the bodies, looking at them both with his golden predator's eyes...

But they made it to the door without incident. The door was closed again. Meryl drew a deep breath, got to one side and gestured Lamia to the other side, then pushed the button.

There was no one on the other side. The suns were just rising over the horizon. And you didn't have to be a tracker to tell that the three sets of tracks leading away were fresh.

In the slanting dawn light, Meryl and Lamia followed the tracks, away from the ship, up into the broken, tumbled rocks at the head of the canyon. Before they had gone even half a mile, the tracks were entirely lost in the rough terrain.

Meryl stood unmoving, staring up into the mountains. Somewhere up there... her best friend's child, and a man who had saved her life, were in the hands of a killer. And there was nothing she could do.

"Meryl," Lamia said softly. "Let's go get some food and figure out what to do."

Meryl nodded. Lamia was right. Together, the two of them started walking back to the ship.


	21. Angel Arms

Vash's breath stopped in his throat.

Black hair. Long black hair. Black jacket -- no crosses on the sleeves, he noted irrelevantly, insanely.

He watched, as if in slow motion, the other man's eyes come up -- slowly, slowly -- pause on Vash's red coat -- saw the eyes start to widen, saw that familiar gaze travel up the coat, over the gun arm, up to Vash's face --

Their eyes met, one pair turquoise as the ocean he'd never seen, the other clear blue-gray...

Alex Saverem, completely ignored by both men, straightened and brushed himself off. "So," he said. "I take it you two know each other."

But Vash couldn't move, couldn't take his eyes off Wolfwood.

"So I did..." Vash began hoarsely, and cleared his throat and went on, "So I did see you in March City."

Wolfwood looked startled. "You were there?"

"I was, I -- So... what -- what are you calling yourself these days?"

"Alex Daniels."

"Daniels... is that your middle name? Is that what the D stands for?"

"It's Daniel," Wolfwood admitted. "After my uncle."

"I never knew that. And Alex... for some reason I never even thought of looking for you under that name... Alex was the name I used, you know, when I..."

He trailed off. He couldn't breathe. Tears trickled freely from beneath his yellow sunglasses.

"I know," Wolfwood whispered. "I remember, Tongari. ... How'd you know I was using a pseudonym?"

"If you were using your real name, no matter where you went in this world, I would have found you."

Now Wolfwood looked stunned. "You looked for me?"

"Of course I looked for you! I -- Dammit -- Don't you know I can count my friends -- people who know who I really am, and still don't fear or hate me -- on the fingers of one hand? Do you think I'm not going to do everything in my power -- Even if it's beyond all logic or reason --"

"I'm sorry, Tongari," Wolfwood whispered.

Before he could stop himself or think about what he was doing, Vash crossed the room in two quick strides and hit him across the face as hard as he could. Alex Saverem jumped at the crack of flesh on flesh, bone on bone. Wolfwood was spun halfway around by the force of the blow.

"You bastard! Why didn't you let us know you were alive?"

Wolfwood raised his hand to his cheek, flexed his jaw to make sure nothing was broken. "Dammit, Tongari, that was uncalled for --"

"Uncalled for!" Vash looked around for something else to hit, but he couldn't exactly trash Alex Saverem's house, so he clenched his fist, feeling the throbbing begin around his knuckles. It hurt, but the pain was good. It gave him something to focus on. Something to believe in.

Alex Saverem peered curiously around Vash. "Who are you, boy, and what are you doing in my house?"

Wolfwood looked up, still rubbing his jaw. "Um. I'm Karen's son...."

Now it was Saverem's turn to look shocked -- and angry.

"My daughter and her children are dead. I don't know who you are, or how you found out --"

"I lived," Wolfwood said quickly. "I watched my brothers and sisters killed before my eyes, along with my parents. But I was hidden. They never saw me."

Alex Saverem studied his face; Vash watched them both. Somewhere in Wolfwood's eyes Saverem must have found the confirmation he sought, for he said softly, "Which of Karen's children are you?"

"Nicholas."

"All these years..." Alex Saverem breathed. "Why didn't you tell me...?"

Wolfwood smiled grimly, a little lopsided from the swelling in his jaw. "My uncle told me that you'd refused to have anything to do with me, because I killed the people who killed my parents. And after a while, I didn't want to see you, or anyone connected with my past. It was enough for me to move on."

"Daniel... You were with Daniel!"

"He stopped using that name a long time ago."

"I don't care what he called himself when he picked up the guns. He'll always be Daniel to me." Alex Saverem looked away. "He told me all Karen's children were dead..."

"Bastard," Wolfwood said between his teeth. "I'm not sorry he's dead. I'm glad I wasn't the one who killed him, though."

Alex Saverem, from the look on his face, was still trying to wrap his mind around the whole concept. He shook his head, and turned to Vash. "You look as if you need to sit down, young man."

"Sure," Vash said numbly, and sank into one of the chairs.

"My daughter," Saverem said, "may she rest in peace, used to say that nothing is solved on an empty stomach. I'll get us some tea and sandwiches."

"I'll help," Wolfwood said hastily, chasing him into the kitchen, still rubbing his jaw where Vash had hit him.

Vash was left alone in the living room. He wasn't sorry -- he wanted, needed, to be by himself for a few minutes. To think.

 _Wolfwood's alive._

We never found a body. There was no body.

But there was so much blood... how could he have survived? And where has he been all these years? Didn't he realize we'd want to know he was alive?

Fast on the heels of that thought came another one... _Wait a minute. If Wolfwood is Alex Saverem's grandson..._

...Alex is Rem's son...

...that means Wolfwood...

It was all too much. Vash hunched lower in the chair. He didn't want to deal with this, not on top of Legato coming back, on top of Knives missing, on top of the children's deaths and Angie's involvement... it was just too much.

 

* * *

 

"Put this there. No, not on top of that! How about the chair, maybe."

Wolfwood obeyed, helping his grandfather clean off a narrow section of counter for food preparation.

"So," Alex Saverem said conversationally, slicing pickles. "You're alive."

"Yeah," Wolfwood muttered, twisting a hunk of bread between his hands.

"Quit mauling the food. Looks like your friend out there didn't know that, either."

Wolfwood could still feel the ache in the side of his face where Vash had hit him. Vash had hit him! For a minute, he'd seen steel in Vash's eyes.

 _Sometimes I know why people are afraid of him, why he's called the Humanoid Typhoon. But ... he never used to be like that? Did he? Has it just been so long since I've seen him, or has he really changed, since I saw him last? There's something ... harder about him. Colder._

 _I guess he must have seen things, since I knew him. Lots of things. My death, and more. He killed Legato... at least that's what I heard, and that wasn't just another Typhoon rumor; there were eyewitnesses to it. Vash killed somebody! And he stopped Knives somehow..._

It's crazy. As much as I used to want to slap him for the way he'd act, for always seeing the good in everybody, I guess I... I dunno... got used to him that way. It's strange to think that he might have changed.

It's strange to think of Vash being able to kill... and me refusing. Wolfwood half-smiled at the thought.

"Doubledollar for your thoughts," Saverem said.

"Hunh?"

"Inflation," Saverem added, and grinned. Wolfwood recognized that slightly crooked grin. He'd seen it in the mirror. It was rather creepy to see some of his own mannerisms reflected in another person. _Is this what having family is like?_

Since he seemed disinclined to answer, Saverem shrugged, and picked up a tray of sandwiches. "Get the teacups. Let's go feed your friend."

When they got back to the living room, though, Vash was fast asleep, huddled in the chair where they'd left him.

"Figures," Wolfwood muttered. "The big goof."

He didn't have the heart to wake him, though. Vash looked so... well, vulnerable sleeping like that, like an overgrown kid tired out after a long day. And he did look tired. His face was white and drawn, with dark smudges visible beneath the rims of his yellow sunglasses. Wolfwood felt a sudden surge of pity -- and guilt.

 _Wherever he's been for the last few years, it looks like it's been rough on him._

Saverem sat down at the desk and gestured for Wolfwood to get another chair. "Let him sleep. Looks like he could use it. So..." He stared at Wolfwood over the rim of his teacup. "What do you go by? Nick? Nicky?"

"Wolfwood, usually," he admitted. "Not many people use my first name."

"I refuse to call my grandson by his last name. Family has certain prerogatives, kid, and calling family members by their given names happens to be one of them. Nicholas it is."

"Why'd you bother asking, then?" Wolfwood demanded, taking a bite of a sandwich.

"Bit of a foul-tempered little bastard, aren't you," Saverem said. "I see you take after your father."

"My father?" He couldn't remember his father ever swearing or raising his voice. Of course, he had few memories of the man.

"Your father," Alex Saverem said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. He hadn't touched the food. His eyes gazed into the distance, into the past. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I loved that boy's grandmother, loved her like my own mother, but her grandson... ah. You've never met such an ill-mannered little brute in your life. It wasn't entirely his fault... his parents were dead, and Nadia'd done her best to raise him, but he got in with a bad crowd. He was a smart kid, and nice when he wasn't around his friends, but when they got together -- they raised hell around town, I'll tell you. When I caught Karen running around with that boy, I coulda disowned her. That's when I discovered that the girl had inherited my mother's steel backbone. I banned the kid from my house, so she just moved out."

Wolfwood tried to reconcile this with the mental image he had of his parents -- serene, gentle people. "What happened then?"

"What happens to everybody. Age mellows. Karen got a little wild for a while, but it wasn't really her, and when Steve saw that it had to be his rowdy friends or his girlfriend, he chose her. They bought some land outside of town and started a windplant farm. You were born on that farm."

Flames... smoke... the blackened rafters of the house where he'd lived all his life, stretching towards the sky like twisted fingers...

"I remember the farm," Wolfwood said.

"Thought you might. You weren't that young."

Near the door, Vash moaned and stirred in his sleep. "Augh... donuts... giant donuts... attacking..."

Alex Saverem looked over at him. "Probably ought to wake him up and let him eat."

"He could use it," Wolfwood said. "Skinny bastard, but I've never seen anybody eat like he does." He got up and went over, a trifle reluctantly, and laid his hand on Vash's shoulder, shook him gently. "Hey, Tongari --"

Vash snapped awake and the gun arm came up, unfolding, to press against Wolfwood's throat. An instant later, Vash saw who it was, and the gun folded away. "Sorry," he said.

"Don't worry about it," Wolfwood managed, through a suddenly dry throat. He'd been a heartbeat from being blown away -- by Vash! What had happened to Tongari to change him like this?

"We have food," Alex Saverem said.

"Donuts?" Vash asked hopefully.

"No... but there's a nice little shop down the street. I'll point it out when you leave."

"Oh. Thanks." Vash tucked into the sandwiches as if he hadn't eaten in weeks. Well, Wolfwood thought, maybe he hadn't.

"So what have you been up to lately, Tongari?" he asked.

He knew it was the wrong thing to say when Vash glared at him.

"I still haven't figured out if I'm going to forgive you for not being dead."

"Well, excuse me all to hell! If I'd known you were going to be that way about it, I would've bled to death just for you, Tongari."

"Boys, boys," Alex Saverem said.

"He's hardly a boy," Wolfwood said. "He's older than you, even if he doesn't look like it."

"What do you mean?" Saverem asked, looking at Vash curiously.

Vash glared again. "I was getting to that!"

"There's obviously a lot of explaining that needs to be done here," Saverem said. "Which one of you wants to go first?"

"Him," they said simultaneously, and then both of them glared at each other.

"Actually," Vash said after a moment, relenting, "unless your news involves a serial killer attempting to track you down, I'd better talk first because my story's sort of pressing. Although knowing you, I wouldn't be surprised if it does."

"Knowing you, Tongari, I'm not a bit surprised that _yours_ does."

"Let Vash talk," Alex Saverem said. "We'll get to you, Nicholas."

Vash hesitated as attention in the room turned to him, and Wolfwood was a bit gratified to see that in spite of his harder edge, he still got bashful as a kid when everyone was looking at him.

"To begin with," he said, staring at the floor and speaking mostly to Alex Saverem, "I'm a Plant."

Wolfwood already knew that, but it was still startling hearing him say it.

"How is that possible?" Saverem said quietly. "I never saw a Plant that could walk as a man."

"I don't know. I only know that I'm here, and I am what I am. And my brother is what he is. Your mother raised us both on the ships..."

He told the story haltingly, in few words: how Knives had caused the crash that killed Rem and stranded humankind on this desert world, how he'd wandered in search of Knives, and found him, only to lose him again. The events at the Bad Lads' hideout, and Tony's mysterious powers that resembled Legato's -- Vash had to backtrack here and explain to Saverem who Legato was. Lucas's death, and Angie's revenge. Wolfwood flinched at this, remembering the sorrow in Angie's face.

"And now Tony is looking for you, Alex, if he lives -- and we've no reason to believe that he's dead. If Legato can come back from the dead, then..."

"How do you know that this guy's Legato?" Wolfwood challenged.

Vash turned on him, his eyes the knife-sharp outlaw's eyes. "You weren't there. I saw what he could do. No one but Legato has those abilities. Besides, he answered to the name... at least when he wasn't claiming to be Tony Blanchard."

"Look, before you met Legato, you would have said, _'No one_ has those powers.' Who knows, maybe Legato's not the only one that Knives warped in that way."

"I don't know," Vash said. "I don't know. Anyway, Alex, Tony is looking for the Genesis Machine, something that you apparently built."

Alex Saverem turned white. "The Genesis Machine... I haven't thought of it in so many years."

"Genesis Machine?" Wolfwood said. "What's that?"

Saverem shook his head. "I ... have to think. What to tell you. How best to tell you... particularly _you,_ Vash. Nicholas, why don't you tell your story. I need to think."

Vash continued staring at him, but finally turned to Wolfwood. "I want to hear this too. All of it."

It hurt, to have Vash acting so cold towards him. He hadn't thought it would, but it did. Wolfwood wondered if what had gone wrong between them could ever be made right.

 _Maybe it could if you hadn't run for six years, nitwit. Well, time to face the music._

"It's not a long story," he said. "Nothing like Tonga-- like Vash's. I guess I'll start from the beginning, too -- my family was wiped out by gunmen when I was a little kid. You know that, grandfather. I later..." He drew a deep breath. "With my uncle's help, I tracked them down and killed them. I was seven. I still don't know why --"

He broke off at an intake of breath from Vash, and looked over at him. Vash was looking at him with the oddest expression -- a sort of the-pieces-are-coming-together look.

"Got a question, Tongari?"

Vash waved a hand, still with that strange look on his face. "No... no. Go on."

"Anyway... the woman that Vash mentioned, Angie -- Angelina -- saved me from the people who killed my parents. She lived with us and later became my uncle's girlfriend. Lucas... a cousin I barely had a chance to know... anyway, it's over now." He shook his head to clear it. "I worked for the same people who employed my uncle Chap -- Daniel. The people Vash was telling you about, grandfather. Legato and Knives. In the end, I betrayed them. They... wanted me to kill Vash. I wouldn't."

He was aware of Vash listening intently, and realized that Vash probably had never known what really happened, that day six years ago.

"I fought with my uncle Daniel, and won. It was the first time I ever managed to beat him. He could have killed me, but he didn't. But Legato..." He paused before he could make himself continue. The memories were still fresh and sharp, even after all these years. "Legato took control of my uncle's body and forced him to shoot me in the back. I told Vash where to find Knives... and I left... expecting to die.

"But Angie found me. Uncle Daniel had told her about the fight with me, she later said. Daniel thought he'd killed me, so she went looking for my body... but I was still alive. Angie had a vehicle... a flying machine. She and Daniel used it to travel with the Gung-Ho Guns... Legato's gang. It's tough to describe. I don't remember it very well... I was hardly conscious at the time. But that vehicle can cross in minutes distances that would take a man on foot hours. She took me out into the desert, to a crashed ship she knew about. There, she used lost technology to save my life. She stayed with me for a few days, but one morning I woke and she was gone. I couldn't find her anywhere, and I didn't want to stay in the ship, so I wound up walking out. Almost died in the desert. I was just lucky that two prospectors found me and took me to the nearest town. When they asked what my name was... I just made one up. Alex Daniels."

Now he was avoiding Vash's still-intent gaze. "When I was strong enough, I tried to find out what had happened after I disappeared. I learned that Legato was dead and, according to the rumors, so was Vash the Stampede. I figured it wasn't true... I couldn't see Tongari dying that easy. But there was nothing I could do to help any more. So I just ... wandered. I only know two ways to make a living -- killing people, and preaching. One I wouldn't do any more, and the other... I didn't feel I had any right. So I got odd jobs and lived the life of Alex Daniels, migrant worker. Until I met a girl named Sand, who is a Plant..."

He went on telling them about Sand, feeling the words come easier now. He still couldn't bring himself to meet Vash's eyes. No matter what he saw there -- anger, condemnation, forgiveness, pity -- he didn't think he could handle it.

"So you brought her to me, hoping I could help her," Alex Saverem said.

"Yes. But I didn't know Tongari was going to be here. I guess he might be able to help her better than you can..."

He risked a glance at Vash's face, and saw that it was expressionless. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

"I don't know," Vash said. "I... don't know what's going on with the Plants lately. The one in March City overloaded and killed at least one of the townspeople before dying. The rest of them are upset and agitated, and now the one here won't talk to me. I don't know if I'll be any more helpful to Sand than anybody else."

"It sounds like she's in a bad way, though," Saverem said.

Wolfwood nodded. "She hardly eats or sleeps. She's so tired that she'll nod off sitting on the back of my bike, but then at night I'll wake up and see her staring at the stars, wide awake. This morning..." He hesitated, unsure if it was a betrayal of Sand to tell them about this. But, dammit, she was sick! "I saw her talking to herself. She acted sunstruck, but we hadn't even been out in the sun all day. When I went up to her, she didn't seem to know what she was doing there."

"Is this some sickness you recognize?" Saverem asked Vash.

Vash shook his head. "But then understand, Knives and I are the only ones like ourselves that I've ever met. The thought that there's someone else like me -- it's incredible. I've never had anything like that happen, but it doesn't mean anything. Maybe I've just never caught that particular germ."

"Could we go see her tonight?" Saverem asked Wolfwood. "You seem quite worried."

"I wouldn't mind. I left her at one of the hotels in town. When I left ... it was like she thought she was saying goodbye to me forever. She might be sicker than she looks."

The old man set his teacup aside and rose. "Let's go, then!"

They headed out the door. At Vash's quiet reminder, Alex Saverem locked the door behind them. It wasn't until they were on the street, heading towards the hotel, that an odd thought crossed Wolfwood's mind -- Alex had deflected the conversation neatly, and had not brought up the subject of the Genesis Machine again.

 

* * *

 

Pounding on her door woke Angie out of a light, restless sleep.

"Ugh. Coming, coming." A glance out the window told her that it was the middle of the night. She pulled on some clothes and staggered over to the door. "Vash, is that you?"

But it wasn't -- it was Hikari. He looked tousled and anxious. "Angie, hi. Sorry to wake you up. Did you check on Sand like I asked you to?"

Angie nodded. "I just looked in and she was asleep, so I didn't bother her. Why, what's wrong? Has she gotten sicker?"

"No," Wolfwood said. "She's gone. She'd stuffed a pillow under her blanket so it would look like she was in the bed. Did you actually see her, or just look in from the door?"

"From the door." Angie's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, Hikari! You don't think she's wandering around somewhere, delirious..."

"If she's delirious, why'd she take the trouble to make it look like she was still here? Doesn't sound like a delirious person to me. Vash and my grandfather are downstairs --"

"Oh, you found him! And you've met Vash! Isn't he a nice person? Just a minute, let me get my shoes on."

She followed him downstairs. When they entered the lobby, Alex Saverem was speaking softly to Vash in the corner. Angie stopped short at the look on Vash's face -- he was chalk white, his blue-green eyes standing out like marbles against the pale skin. Glancing sideways at Wolfwood, she saw that he'd noticed it too.

Saverem looked up and stopped speaking when he saw them. Vash smiled, but it was a slightly strained smile. "Hi, Angie. This is Alex Saverem."

"Nice to meet you," Angie said, but she kept looking at Vash, and wondered what they'd been talking about.

Wolfwood explained the situation briefly to Vash and Alex Saverem.

Alex Saverem offered to help them look for her. "I have a car. It'll be faster than walking."

"Why don't Vash and I get the flyer?" Angie offered. "We'll be able to cover even more ground in that."

So the four of them went out into the dark night, Wolfwood went with his grandfather, somewhat reluctantly, and Angie with Vash.

The two of them walked out of town -- just the two of them, as they had walked in, but Angie sensed that the situation was going to change. Regardless of what happened to their little group, she knew that her solo days of traveling with Vash were over, and she found that she regretted it.

"You know him," she said, finally, searching for some conversation topic.

"Hmm? Who?"

"Hikari. Wolfwood. You know him."

"What makes you say that?" Vash said, a bit too quickly.

Angie hesitated, thinking. "It's just... the way you two interact. You don't act like strangers. Granted, you don't exactly act like friends... but I can tell you know him."

"Yes," Vash said shortly. "I did, once."

He didn't seem to want to elaborate, so Angie walked in silence.

They wandered around in the dark for some time before locating the rock pile where they'd stashed the flyer. Angie felt oddly safer, more right, once they were off the ground and aloft. At least this way, they could outrun anything that tried to attack them.

Vash leaned his elbows on the steering console, and gazed off at the distant glimmer of dawn on the horizon, the wind whipping his spiky hair. Angie wondered what he was thinking about, what strange and painful past he and Hikari shared. But it wasn't her place to ask.

Finally Vash said, "I think I know how to defeat Tony."

"Huh?" Tony was, for once, the farthest thing from Angie's mind.

Vash turned to look at her. His face had settled into a cool, distant mask, and she found herself thinking that maybe he _could_ be the legendary outlaw, after all.

"Did you notice him hesitate?" Vash said. "In the cave, when he was talking to us about Nadia. He actually stuttered. I saw the same thing before, on top of that mountain. Both times, he was talking about his former life -- about Nadia, about the ship."

"I didn't notice it," Angie said. "I wasn't... paying attention to that. But now that you mention it..." She frowned. "He _would_ get pretty spacy whenever he'd talk about her. Which wasn't often. I don't know, I just thought it was a difficult subject for him to talk about."

"Yet his whole life's been obsessed with her, as far as I can tell," Vash said. "Is that recent, that hesitation? Or has he always been like that?"

"I don't know. I think it's recent, but I was so young, before. I really don't remember." Angie stared at him, head cocked on one side. "What are you thinking?"

"Just that... I've told you before that Tony reminds me of someone I once knew. Someone I thought was dead. Now I'm starting to wonder. It's almost like... he's two people in one body. Sometimes he's pretty clearly Tony. At least he claims to be Tony. His reactions are different. His movements are different. And then sometimes..." Vash trailed off.

"What are you getting at? You think he has a split personality, or something?"

" 'Or something' is probably more like it. I really don't know. I do think that the hesitation's real, though. Sometimes he actually confuses himself about who he is. I think the way to cripple him is to capitalize on that confusion. Make it worse. It's a horrible thing to do to someone..."

Angie gave him a disbelieving stare, thinking he was joking, but he appeared to be perfectly serious. _You're ... something else again, Vash. After all we've been through, after all you've seen Tony do, you still don't like the thought of hurting him, let alone killing him._

 _But that's all right. You don't have to. I'll do it myself if we ever run into him again._

"It's a thought," Vash said, shrugging.

"If he can really... control people's movements, then it may be all we have," Angie said. "Is that what we should do, then? Try to get him talking about Nadia?"

"It's when he shifts gears between his life now, and his previous life on the ship. I suspect the trick is to get him to think about both at the same time."

He lapsed into silence and so did Angie, thinking about what he'd told her.

In silence, they canvassed the area in the pre-dawn sunshine and eventually ran into Wolfwood and Alex Saverem. The two of them were in a beat-up old Jeep.

"So we just look until we find her," Saverem said. "She's a sick kid -- she couldn't have gone too far, eh?"

Wolfwood looked unconvinced, and, Angie thought, so did Vash.

"That's right," she said. "Until we find her."

 

* * *

 

"Doubledollar for your thoughts," Saverem said.

Wolfwood rested his head in his hands. The melodramatic gesture was hard to pull off in the jolting Jeep, but he tried. "Would you quit saying that?"

"Sorry." His grandfather stared out at the horizon. "So... you care a lot about this girl, huh?"

Wolfwood shrugged. "I dunno. She's tough not to like. She tries so hard. I don't know."

"And that man, too."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Wolfwood snapped, staring out at the landscape. His long hair whipped behind him, tangling in the wind.

"Vash. You're hurt by what you see as his refusal to forgive you."

"By what I see as -- okay, old man. I'd rather ride with Vash than with you. Hell, I'd rather ride with Knives. Pull over right now."

Alex Saverem did no such thing. "I know it's hard for you to get along with people, but I can be as stubborn as you can, kid."

Wolfwood started to make an angry retort, then sighed and leaned his elbow on the rim of the Jeep's door. "Look. I haven't meant to be a bastard with you. I'm perfectly polite to most people. I don't know what it is about you -- and Vash -- that brings out the jerk in me. It's like things pop into my head and I just ... say them."

Alex Saverem gave him a look, at once startled and understanding. "That's called having family, boy. That's how you treat family."

"What -- you behave like an asshole towards them? No wonder this world is so screwed up."

"You really have no idea," Saverem said thoughtfully, looking back at the rough road. "You've never experienced it, have you?"

"I had Uncle Chapel."

"Somehow," Saverem said dryly, "I doubt if your relationship with Daniel could be described in strictly family-oriented terms."

"You seem like a nice guy," Wolfwood said. "How the heck did you raise such a total jerk, anyway?"

Saverem smiled, soft and sad. "That just shows, yet again, how little you understand about family, Nicholas. You don't shape your children, no matter what anyone says. You try... and then they go and do their own thing, and you wonder why. For a long time, I blamed myself for Daniel's actions, until I realized that I did everything I could. He was who he was."

 _I only know that I'm here, and I am what I am,_ Vash had said.

Wolfwood sighed deeply and wondered why his thoughts kept slipping back to Vash, in spite of his efforts to keep his mind on Sand's predicament.

He was distracted by the flyer drifting out of the west and hovering beside the Jeep. Angie was flying it, with Vash sitting on the back. "We found her!" Angie cried triumphantly.

"You did?" Wolfwood said, half standing up in the Jeep. "So why isn't she with you?"

"You'd better come," Vash said.

The dark tone of his voice sent a chill through Wolfwood. "Is she all right?"

"She... won't talk to us," Vash said. "She's walking, though. We think she might listen to you."

Vash and Saverem, in the Jeep, followed the flyer out into the open desert. Finally, around midday, they caught up to her -- a child, alone, her tiny figure dwarfed by the mountains rising in the distance. The heat-shimmers distorted her small figure and made her seem insubstantial as glass, as if they could see the desert right through her body.

Alex Saverem pulled the jeep alongside her. Sand trudged along, her head bowed, her hair whipping across her face in the hot wind. She ignored them.

Wolfwood leaned across Alex, who gave him a look of annoyance. "Hey, little lady -- want a ride?"

Sand didn't look up.

"Stop the car," Vash said quietly to Alex, who did.

When the rumble of the engine died, the only sounds were the soft chuff-chuffing of Sand's steady footsteps as she kept walking, slogging through the loose sand, drawing farther away from them. The flyer settled gently to the desert floor and Vash and Angie got off, as Wolfwood and Alex Saverem climbed out of the Jeep. They all started walking after her.

"Hey," Wolfwood said softly. "Hey, Sand."

Finally she stopped and turned around. He was shocked when he saw her face. Had it been this gaunt, this haggard, when he last saw her in November City? It was like a skull with skin drawn tightly across the bones. Her eyes burned from shadowed sockets, strangely bright, glittering in the sun with a heat like fever or fire.

"What are you doing, following me?" she demanded. Her voice rasped in her throat; from the sound of it, she'd had no water throughout the blazing desert morning. "Why can't you take a hint?"

"Hint? What hint? You just disappeared. For all I knew, something horrible had happened to you."

For a moment, a flicker of something passed across her sunken eyes... some softer emotion, gone and buried in an instant. Then her face twisted as if with pain, and when she spoke again her voice was harsher, deeper -- like a stranger's voice. "If you don't get out of here, something horrible is going to happen to _you_ , Alex... and I don't want that."

Wolfwood took a step backward... and that was when he noticed something strange. Sand had always been shorter than him, hadn't she? A _lot_ shorter. But now, he didn't even have to bend his neck to look into her eyes.

Her strange, angry eyes.

A warning bell began to go off, deep in his brain.

"I said go away," Sand said, bowing her head. Her wild blond hair fell across her face, hiding it, and she began to shiver, wrapping her thin arms around herself. Wolfwood moved to touch her shoulder and she screamed, _"Go away!"_

"Sand?" Angie said, from behind Wolfwood. "Sand, honey, remember me? We want to help you."

Wolfwood rested his hand on Sand's arm -- and then recoiled with a sharp cry of astonishment and pain. Her skin was burning hot; it was like touching a furnace.

"Wolfwood? What's wrong?" he heard Vash say.

Wolfwood ignored him. "Sand... you're sick, kiddo. You're really sick. Come on, we're going to take you somewhere we can help you."

 _"I don't need help."_

That voice... it came from Sand's lips, it had to, though her face was still bowed and hidden. But it wasn't a girl's voice. It wasn't a child's voice.

"Sand?" Wolfwood whispered.

Sand raised her head slowly. The wind whipped the hair away from her face. Her eyes were blank holes in her head, filled with blue flame, and her skeletal face was twisted into a horrible grin.

Wolfwood took a step backward, and then, as she moved towards him, another step. The features were the same... it was Sand, it had to be... but the way she stood, the way she moved... some deep part of his brain was screaming _You've seen this person before, you know who this is, you just won't admit it..._

"You betrayed me," Sand said, in that horribly familiar adult's voice, and laughed, the soft chuckle of a madman.

Wolfwood took another step backward, and another, staring into her glowing eyes, mesmerized like a mouse in front of a snake.

 _"Wolfwood!"_ A hand seized his shoulder and wrenched him away from Sand so violently it felt like it nearly dislocated the bones. His feet actually left the ground, and he fell in a heap on the rocks and got a mouthful of gravel. Only one person was that strong... Wolfwood pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing, and saw Vash standing between himself and Sand. He realized with a shock that Sand was almost as tall as Vash now.

"You," Vash said quietly. "This is where you went."

Sand was still grinning. "Did you miss me that much?"

Wolfwood jumped at a sudden, soft touch on his arm. He looked up into Angie's worried face. Alex was behind her.

"What's going on?" Angie whispered. "Is she all right?"

No, Wolfwood wanted to say, she's not all right, she's somehow channeling a madman who's out to destroy the entire human race. But he didn't know how to explain to them; he couldn't even begin to explain to himself. He had no idea _why_ he believed it, except that he trusted his senses, and his senses were telling him something that his common sense couldn't rationalize.

Somehow, beyond all comprehension, Sand was Knives.

 

* * *

 

"You," Vash whispered.

"Me," Knives said, in Sand's soft, feminine voice, and grinned like a madman, Sand's lips curling back from small white teeth.

"This isn't possible," Vash whispered.

"What's wrong? Don't you know your own brother?" Sand's head tilted back in laughter -- Knives' laugh.

"How -- how did you do this? How did you take over this girl?"

Knives was still grinning broadly. "There is no girl. There is only a body... a body for me."

"There is a girl," Vash insisted. "What mind controls this body?"

"Mine," Knives said.

"Wolfwood said --"

"Wolfwood! You trust that traitor, do you? He'll get what's coming to him..."

"Stay away from my friends," Vash snarled. "Tell me what's going on, Knives. Tell me who this girl is."

"What do you mean, 'who?' You act as if this body can move independently, think independently. This body was made, brother -- made just for me."

"What?" Vash said.

Knives shrugged, with Sand's shoulders. "When you came to me in Demetery, I'd already understood that I might not win that fight. If I didn't, there had to be a Plan B. I've always been the cautious one, haven't I?"

"So -- so this girl is --"

"I had a laboratory," Knives said. "I had human technicians, totally under my control. Or so I thought. And I had Plant material... and I began to grow new bodies. But you came upon me too soon. The process was not done. When you attacked me, defeated me, I tried to flee into those new bodies. But the backlash of power was too great. It destroyed most of them."

"You killed -- you killed children -- of our kind --"

"There were no children! Don't be ridiculous! Only genetic material designed to create a host for me. But one was developed enough to survive. The explosion killed all of the technicians except two women -- and those women took the surviving child and fled into the desert with her."

"Sand..." Vash whispered.

 _"There is no Sand!_ What you call Sand was manufactured in a laboratory. I've had some difficulty finding my way around this new brain, and fighting my way past the spontaneously-generated electrical impulses of this new brain --"

"What you call electrical impulses is a personality called Sand. A good person. She grew up in the desert. She has a right to survive."

"There is no Sand! Look at me, Brother! Tell me you see this 'Sand' when you look in my eyes."

Vash met those awful, glowing blue eyes. Then Knives took his hand from under Sand's cloak, and Vash saw what he held.

The situation had just gotten worse.

"I do not need this to do what I must do," Knives whispered, holding the silver gun that had been Vash's. "But with this -- I have control. I am no longer at the mercy of the power we possess -- I control it totally. See... see what I can do, in this new, young, powerful body... see what you could be, brother.

"See what happens," Knives whispered in Sand's voice. "See what happens to those who betray me."

He raised his hand, with the gun in it, and the gun melted like butter, and blue light surged from his hand. Energy crackled around his hand. It was the Angel Arm -- and yet it wasn't, for he was more fully in control of that destructive energy than Vash had ever been. And Knives lowered the arm, and in its target --

Wolfwood. Angie. Alex Saverem.

The light rolled across them. Vash had brief moments of horror -- Angie trying to shield Wolfwood with her own body, though it was hopeless... Alex Saverem kneeling, preparing to meet his fate in silence...

Then their bodies dissolved in flames.

Vash screamed incoherently. Without knowing how it happened, he found himself with his mechanical hand was gripping Sand's throat, lifting her off the ground. His other arm rippled with light around its edges, thrust up under her chin.

Sand's small lips just smiled at him with Knives' superior smile.

One part of his mind was screaming at him: There's a child in there! An innocent child! Don't hurt her!

Another part screamed: If you'd killed Knives six years ago, none of this would have happened! Angie! Alex! Wolfwood -- dead _again_ because of you!

"You won't hurt me, brother. We are one."

"I will never be one with you!" Vash screamed.

Knives wrenched his new, smaller body free, and together the two of them tumbled down a short, rocky slope and plowed into the sand at the bottom. Knives struggled free first, and fell onto Vash's chest. Blue light still crackled around the Angel Arm.

"Take that back!" he cried. "We're brothers! You can't deny it!"

"No," Vash gasped. "I will never accept that. I am not like you!"

"We are one!" Knives screamed, his lighter girls' voice slipping into a falsetto. "We need no one else!"

"I don't need you!" Vash shouted. "Down through the years, you've destroyed everything that ever meant anything to me! How could I believe you'd change? _I never want to see you again!"_

Knives gasped in anger, in pain. He brought Sand's small hand to press against Vash's face. Sparks crackled around the fingers.

"Take that back!"

"Never!" Vash cried. "I wanted to love you -- I tried, God, Knives, I tried! For Rem! For you! For myself! But I can't! There is nothing in you to love!"

Knives cried out, and blue light flared across the knuckles of Sand's hand -- crackled in Vash's hair, on his skin, in his clothes.

Vash screamed with the pain of the flash burns -- down his side, down his face.

Tears ran down Sand's cheeks. "I assure you, brother, this hurts me more than it hurts you," Knives said in Sand's agonized voice. "Sometimes one has no choice but to punish... you'll be grateful to me someday, just as you'll be grateful to me for wiping out the last of Rem's children, and ending the travesty that she has created on this world."

"Never," Vash gasped through gritted teeth. "Burn me all you like -- kill me if you want -- you are no kin of mine, Knives!"

Knives shrieked in rage -- and was there hurt also? Betrayal? Then a last bolt of agony blazed across Vash's scalp, and he passed out.

 

* * *

 

Blue light. Shock. Heat.

Death.

No....

Wolfwood had seen the Angel Arm in action before. He'd seen it blow a hole in the moon. He never thought he'd see it up close -- and survive.

Yet here he was, lying on his back, with Angie on top of him.

"Angie?" Wolfwood murmured.

For a moment he was terrified that she was dead -- but then her brown lashes flickered. "Hikari?" she murmured.

"Angie! You okay?"

"My skin stings a little. That's it, I think."

There is no way, Wolfwood thought. This has got to be some kind of weird afterlife. Ouch... make that some kind of afterlife with a rock digging into my ass. There's no way we could have survived that.

Angie sat up slowly, and so did he, as she got her weight off him. And stared.

Around him and Angie, there was a perfect semicircle of untouched sand and rocks. In every direction, the rocks were black and churned as if tossed and torn by a giant hand.

Alex Saverem's blackened body lay among the rocks.

There was no question of him being alive. There was barely enough left to identify the body.

 _Yet we're alive... why?_

Wolfwood became aware of voices, shouting down the hill. "Hang on," he murmured to Angie, and crept to the edge.

He saw Vash, lying on his back -- and Sand crouching on top of him with blue light flaring around her hands.

No. Not Sand, he reminded himself. Knives.

God... it looked like she was burning Vash to death.

If he'd had a gun, he would have just shot her -- whether or not he was a pacifist now, whether or not she was a child, or a friend. Wolfwood understood, as Vash didn't, that Knives was far too dangerous to live. As long as he was in this world, people would continue to die. People like Alex Saverem...

Vash appeared to be unconscious, but still Sand kept blasting him, her eyes wide and glowing blue. Vash's hair was smoldering.

 _Knives is going to kill him this time, really going to kill him. Whatever it was that Tongari said to him, it looks like he's lost it..._

Wolfwood ran down the hill and tackled the child's body from behind.

They rolled over and over together on the rocks. Wolfwood gasped with the pain of flashback from the fires still flaring around her body. He expected to be engulfed in flames, but nothing happened. They broke apart and Sand rolled away, crouching, staring at him with those glowing blue eyes that contained not a trace of humanity.

And suddenly Wolfwood understood how he'd survived the fire that killed Angie and Alex; why he was still alive, even now, face to face with a madman who should have been able to destroy him with a touch.

Sand.

Knives appeared to come to the same understanding.

"That little bitch! She won't let me kill you! You -- the last child of Rem --"

"Bite me," Wolfwood snapped.

"Bastard," Knives snarled, the word ugly on Sand's pert, pretty mouth. "Traitor. If she won't let me kill you directly -- then Legato can do it for me. I know where you are now."

He scrambled up the hill. "Hey!" Wolfwood yelled, running after.

He got to the top to find Knives with Angie's arm gripped in his.

"Now then," he said to her. "You're going to fly me out of here. I don't have time to figure out that machine on my own. Got that?"

Wolfwood stared at Angie. And Angie, who'd spent a lifetime bowing her head and surviving, simply nodded.

Survival.

Knives half-led, half-dragged Angie to the flyer. The two of them climbed onto it, and Angie took the controls, staring down.

"Angie!" Wolfwood yelled.

There was no response. The flyer rose into the air and sped off into the distance.

Wolfwood, stunned, stared at the place where they'd vanished. Then he drew a deep breath.

 _Tongari..._

He scrambled back down the hill.

Vash hadn't moved. He lay still as the dead, and Wolfwood had to feel for a pulse to make sure that he was really alive. When he turned Vash's head and saw the extent of the damage, he sucked in his breath.

"Shit, Tongari..."

Vash's hair was burned away in clumps, and the skin beneath ranged from an angry red like a bad sunburn, to blisters and charred whitish patches. Parts of his clothing were burned away, the red coat completely ruined. The most chilling aspect of the damage was that it had been deliberately inflicted to cause pain. At least the attack against himself, Angie and Alex, while callous, had not been sadistic like this.

"When I catch up to that bastard, I swear I'm going to kill him. Sand or not."

The pain of his own burns was catching up to him, and his head swam in the heat of the sun. He dragged Vash into the shade of some rocks, trying to be careful not to hurt him further, and limped over to the Jeep to see what had survived the fire.

His dismay grew with each step towards the blackened, still-smoking skeleton of the vehicle. The Jeep was gone beyond repair, along with anything Angie and Alex had been carrying. All they had left was the small canteen Wolfwood carried at his hip, the knife in his leg sheath, and whatever Vash might have.

"Knives may as well not bother sending Legato," Wolfwood murmured. "We'll be dead soon anyway."

Small scavenger lizards were drifting around Alex's body, drawn by the smell of burned meat but still repelled by the scent of fire. Wolfwood threw rocks at them and chased them away.

 _I can't save anyone, not even myself._

He needed to bury his grandfather, but his first duty was to the living. He returned to the little pool of shade under the rocks, half-afraid that Vash might have died in his absence, but his friend was still breathing shallowly.

 _I know you're hard to kill, Tongari. You've proven it time and again. Now you need to prove it one more time, okay?_

The worst dangers with burns, he knew, were dehydration and infection. And, let's see, they were in the middle of the desert with almost no water and nothing sterile to use for bandages. Beyond that, he didn't have a clue how to even begin applying first aid. The only burn victims he could remember were some homeless children who'd been burned in a warehouse fire while he was living at the orphanage. Some of the worst-injured had screamed for days before dying...

But others had survived, he recalled, helped by wet cloths, bedrest, painkillers and lots of liquids. He had none of those.

He took off his shirt and tore it into strips, using his knife for assistance when his burned hands were unable to part the fabric. At least the bandages, if not sterile, would help prevent water loss through the burned areas and contamination by sand and dust. He only bandaged the worst wounds, but ran out of shirt strips anyway and had to ease off Vash's coat and use some pieces of that, too.

After tending Vash's wounds, he turned to himself. His burns were not that bad, mostly on his forearms which appeared to have taken the brunt of Knives' instinctive backlash when Wolfwood had tackled him. He bandaged himself from some of the remaining strips of Vash's coat.

His long hair was a worse casualty than his flesh. Patches of it had been burned away, leaving a ragged mess that hung almost to his waist in places and was burned down to his scalp in others. He hacked at what was left with his knife until he'd gotten rid of most of the scorched places and no longer smelled like a stray dog that had been set on fire. He ran his hand through the shorn mess, which was just long enough to brush his shoulders. Strange to have shorter hair again after these past few years. Well, easy come, easy go.

If they made it through the day's heat with their inadequate supply of water, they were going to be in trouble once again when night came. The desert nights were cold, and all they had to keep warm between them was Wolfwood's jacket and the rags of Vash's red coat. I guess we'll worry about staying alive until then, and cross that bridge when we get there, Wolfwood thought, drinking sparingly of the warm water in his canteen.

He checked on Vash one final time and then went to bury the last remaining member of his family, alone. He improvised a shovel from a piece of the destroyed jeep, but was unable to do more than scoop out a shallow hole from the rocky soil.

Even in death, this planet rejects us, Wolfwood thought. He combed the area for rocks of a size he could carry, and buried the body beneath a crude cairn. From more pieces of the jeep, and a strap off Vash's coat, he fashioned a cross and used more rocks to prop it up above the pathetic grave.

Often he'd seen such crosses, in his travels through the desert. People died all the time out here, for all sorts of reasons. And somehow, each time, the living managed to find enough strength to bury their dead... perhaps succumbing themselves, several iles onward.

Wolfwood sat on the cairn and smoked one of his last cigarettes, thinking morbid thoughts while the ash slowly burned down. The sun slanted long and red across the desert, and the heat was no longer so intense.

Soon we'll wish for the heat, he thought. He had a brief desire to dig up the body and see if any of his grandfather's clothes could be salvaged... He shook off the urge. The dead deserved what little respect he could still manage.

 _I can no longer intercede for your soul, but at least I can leave your mortal remains in peace._

Eventually he went back to Vash. Even Vash's unconscious company was better than being alone with the dead. He sat and watched the shadows creep slowly across the desert, and the light begin to fade.

 _How far did we come, driving? How long would it take me to walk it? Days, at least._

Vash moaned suddenly, and turned his head.

"Tongari! How are you feeling?"

"Thirsty..." Vash whispered.

Wolfwood held the canteen to his lips, feeling guilty for drinking earlier, wasting precious water.

 _But he's dying, and you're alive,_ the darker part of his soul whispered. _The living take care of themselves, and leave the dead to themselves..._

He isn't dying. I won't accept that.

"Tongari? Can you hear me?"

"Alex..." Vash breathed, and for just one moment Wolfwood thought Vash was addressing him, until he realized Vash must mean Alex Saverem.

"He's dead, Tongari. I'm sorry."

"Angie...?"

"She... Knives took her."

Vash sighed, and closed his eyes. Wolfwood continued to sit beside him. He could think of nothing else to do.

"Cursed," Vash mumbled at last.

"What? I didn't catch that."

"Cursed." Vash's eyelids fluttered. "Rem, and Alex. Cursed..."

"Tongari, you're babbling." After a moment's silence, Wolfwood said, "So you... really knew my great-grandmother, huh?"

Vash half-smiled. "Yes. Rem..."

"What was she like?"

"A good person," Vash whispered.

"Like my grandfather."

"Yes. Like Alex."

Good people don't last too long in this world, Wolfwood thought bitterly.

"Hey, Tongari," he said at last. "Speaking of my grandfather... I have a question."

"Go for it," Vash mumbled.

"Personal question."

"Doesn't matter now."

He decided to let that go. "What were you and Grandfather talking about, in the hotel, when I came downstairs with Angie?"

Vash hesitated a moment, then said softly, "The Genesis Machine."

That wasn't at all what Wolfwood had expected. "The Genesis Machine? What IS a Genesis Machine, Tongari?"

"That's what Alex told me," Vash whispered. "It's something he built. Something to carry out Rem's final wishes."

"Which were?"

"To create an Eden on this world."

"Oh? Is that a bad thing?"

"Eden is evil if it can only be created by destroying what should not be destroyed."

Wolfwood waited.

"The Genesis Machine..." Vash hesitated, wet his lips and went on. "The Genesis Machine will remake this world in the image of the world that we left -- that you left, you humans. Not that world as it was when humanity fled it, a poisoned, sterile void. No... A warm, wet world, filled with hope for life. Alex Saverem discovered a way to make this happen."

"How?" Wolfwood asked quietly. He could not even imagine such a thing.

"It draws upon the power of the Plants. But the energy the Machine requires is so great... it would require every Plant on this world. It would use them up. Kill them."

Wolfwood hesitated, trying to wrap his mind around this idea as well.

"Every one? Even you?"

"I don't know," Vash whispered.

"Oh," Wolfwood said softly. "I can see why he didn't want to use it."

"Yes... Alex understood that the survival of one species is not worth the extinction of another. And so he locked it away..."

"Why didn't he destroy it? I mean, something that powerful..."

"He couldn't." Vash's voice had gotten faint and hoarse. "The Genesis Machine binds up so much energy that only a Plant can destroy it. But it would cost that Plant's life to do such a thing. And none of them will."

 _Shit,_ Wolfwood thought, thinking of Vash's general personality, and the sort of things that he was likely to do for strangers. _If Vash ever gets near this thing... guess what he's going to try to do._

Providing Vash survived the night, of course.

Wolfwood gave him another drink of water. "Look, just rest for a while, 'kay?"

"Not yet..." Vash whispered. "There is something else I haven't told you. I didn't mean to keep it from you. I didn't know... I thought she should tell you herself, but..."

His voice trailed off.

"Tongari?" Wolfwood prompted. "Still with me?"

Vash stared off into the distance. "Yes. Thinking. It's about Millie."

"How is she?" Wolfwood asked, trying not to think of her, of the warm blue eyes, the soft hands...

"She's ... changed, but in a good way," Vash murmured. "She's grown. Matured. She's..."

"Yes?"

"She has a child."

Wolfwood waited for the impact of that to really hit him. Strangely, it didn't seem to. So Millie had moved on with her life and found someone else. It was what he'd wanted her to do, what he'd hoped she'd do. There was a dull, empty sadness, but not despair.

 _I knew I couldn't walk back into her life after all these years. I really shouldn't be disappointed._

"What's he like, Tongari? Her husband?"

"Husband?"

"Yeah, the kid's father. Are they married?"

"The father," Vash said softly. "The father is you."

Shock, again.

"That isn't possible. Only the one night..."

"Sometimes once is all it takes," Vash said, a hint of a smile on his burned face.

"Tell me -- my God!" Wolfwood ran his hand through his ragged hair. "Tell me about her. Everything about her. What's she look like? What's her name?"

"Ellie. Her name is Ellie."

He talked, haltingly, speaking of the spirited child with the shaggy black hair. And Wolfwood listened, trying to imagine her, a child with his hair and Millie's eyes. So strange....

Finally Vash was silent for so long that Wolfwood said, "Tongari?"

Another moment passed, and then Vash whispered, so faintly that Wolfwood could barely hear him, "I have a favor to ask."

"Go ahead."

"I want... to confess," Vash whispered.

"Confess? Confess what?"

"My sins," Vash whispered. "I can't die... with all that I've done on my soul. Please."

"I'm not giving you last rites, you bastard. You're not going to die."

"Please."

"I'm not a priest any more. God, Tongari, you know the things I've done. What could _you_ possibly have to confess to _me_?"

"Please. I need this... Nicholas. Before I can close my eyes."

It was the first time that Vash had ever called him by his first name.

"All right," Wolfwood whispered. "If you need to talk, I'll listen, okay? Not as a priest. As your friend."

Vash began to speak... haltingly, pausing often for breath. He spoke of the ships, and Project Seeds, and Wolfwood's great-grandmother's death. Wolfwood listened in wonder, captivated despite himself by the description of places beyond this world that he had never seen -- and awestruck by Vash's part in all of this. He had known some of it before, and heard more in Alex Saverem's living room. But he had never heard the whole thing. He suspected that no other living human being had heard the whole thing.

 _I knew you and Knives weren't human... because Knives told me what the two of you were. But I never really understood what that meant ... until now..._

As he sat quietly in the desert night, listening to Vash's long litany of what Vash perceived to be his own sins, Wolfwood understood confession for the first time. It didn't matter that he had given up his vocation, that he no longer had the moral authority to intercede with God on a person's behalf. That wasn't why people confessed to priests. Oh, maybe some of them went out of duty, and some went for fear of their mortal soul. But mostly, they just needed to have someone to listen -- someone who wouldn't hate them, someone who wouldn't tell another living soul.

 _I can do that for you, at least, Tongari._

Vash finally wound to a close, with Alex's death and the deaths of the children at the Bad Lads' hideout. His voice trailed off into silence. Wolfwood stirred, stretching his cramping leg. He had not moved throughout Vash's confession.

"I can't absolve you, Tongari," Wolfwood said softly. "I don't have that right anymore. The only authority I have anymore is authority over my own soul... so the only kind of absolution I can give is to tell you that _I_ don't blame you for anything that happened. That's all I can offer."

Vash smiled faintly.

"You have no idea what a rare and precious thing that is," he whispered, his voice a thin thread barely loud enough to hear. "You have no idea what it means... after all the years of hiding who and what I am, to know that one person, at least, knows the truth and doesn't hate me. The spirit of your great-grandmother lives on in you, Wolfwood."

"Yeah," Wolfwood murmured. "That's what Knives seems to be afraid of."

Vash's eyes opened a bit wider. "Please... don't stay here. You aren't safe. Get out. Maybe you will have to face them again someday... but at least make it a time and place of your own choosing, when you aren't tired and hurt and weaponless. Don't throw your life away. Your daughter needs her father."

"Ellie..." He breathed the name of the child who carried his blood, the child he'd never seen.

Vash's aquamarine eyes stared vacantly at the canopy of stars overhead, and suddenly he smiled again. "Rem..."

"What are you talking about now, Tongari?"

The eyes had focused, but there was only empty air in the place he was looking. "Rem... I knew I'd see you again. I've wanted... for all this time, I've wanted..."

"Tongari, you're hallucinating. There's nobody there."

Vash only smiled, and closed his eyes.

"Tongari? Dammit, Tongari. Vash...!"


	22. A Drink of Water

Neither Meryl nor Lamia wanted to sleep inside the ship, but they didn't want to be outside, either. They wound up sitting in the car for the rest of the night, too wired to sleep. Even when the morning sun illuminated the canyon, they didn't want to get out of the car. They ate a cold breakfast, watching the shadows creep up the canyon walls. Meryl dumped some coffee grounds into a cup of lukewarm water from her canteen. It tasted horrible, but holding the cup calmed her nerves somewhat.

"We are so screwed," Lamia moaned. "We don't have anywhere near enough gas to get back to that last town, and we can't carry enough food and water to walk out."

Meryl opened her mouth to comment on whose fault it was that they were here in the first place -- then closed it again. It was time to stop blaming Lamia for this mess, time to admit that she herself bore an equal burden of guilt -- and that Lamia, in fact, had apparently been right about Knives. If the decision had been up to Meryl, she would have shot an innocent man.

Knives...

She awkwardly patted Lamia's shoulder. She didn't offer cheerful platitudes because she knew Lamia was old enough, mature enough, to see right through them. They _were_ in a lot of trouble, and Meryl had no idea how they were going to get out.

"Maybe there's a town closer than the one we came through," she offered. It was the only thing she could think of -- really the only option short of sitting here waiting for Legato to come back. She knew they would never find Legato and his hostages by searching the mountains. There was too much ground to cover. Meryl had no idea what she'd actually do when, or if, they reached civilization... but maybe they could find Vash, if nothing else...

"There wasn't any sign," Lamia said, but the bleakness was gone from her voice.

The two of them climbed up to the top of the Seeds ship to give them a better vantage point. They had a nice view of the desert from up here, clear and unimpeded. And utterly barren.

Well... perhaps not.

"Do you see that?" Lamia asked, pointing. "It looks like smoke, doesn't it?"

Meryl squinted. "It could be dust," she said uncertainly.

"It's smoke," Lamia said. "And where there's smoke, there's bound to be people! Maybe even a town."

"Way out here, it's just as likely to be bandits."

Lamia gave her another of those sullen glares. "Hey, this was your idea."

Meryl started to argue, but gave up. What other choice did they have?

They debated leaving the car, not knowing what sort of terrain they would encounter and also hoping to hide their trail in case Legato came back looking for them, but decided that their chances of survival were better with the car than without it. After all, it had held up pretty well on the trip in; all it had to do was get them out again.

"Knew I shoulda stolen a solar-powered one," Lamia murmured, rationing gas into the tank. Meryl forbore to comment.

They could still see the smoke, even from the ground, now that they knew which way to look. They unloaded most of the food to reduce the car's weight and improve their gas mileage, and Meryl filled their canteens.

"Now," she said, stowing the canteens in the trunk of the car. "What the heck do we do with the Genesis Machine?"

It was too big to fit in the car, and they still didn't know how to get it back into suitcase mode. Lamia suggested tying it on top of the car, but Meryl hated having it exposed where anyone -- "anyone" meaning "Tony" -- could see it. Finally they left it in the medical bay, concealing it as best they could in a dark corner and covering it with a sheet.

"I know this is a bad idea," Meryl said. "I mean, we know he can get in."

"Like it would be safer with us."

True.

"Ready to go?"

"Not getting any younger," Lamia said.

Meryl took the first shift driving, while Lamia gazed moodily out the window. It was surprisingly difficult for them to force themselves to leave the relative safety and familiarity of the ship's immediate environs, heading out onto the open desert again. But soon the cliffs had swallowed the ship.

"I'm memorizing landmarks so we can find it again," Lamia said. "You'd better do that too."

"We won't be coming back this way, not for a while," Meryl said, but she found herself looking at the cliffs around them, trying to fix their appearance in her mind. Lamia was right. If this didn't pan out, for whatever reason, they at least had food and water at the ship.

The day wore on. They stopped to change drivers, eat lunch and drink some water. What I wouldn't give for a bath, Meryl thought ruefully, plucking at her sweat-drenched shirt. If we do find people out here, they'll probably take one whiff of us and run the other way!

For some reason, that launched one of her most precious memories -- the first time she'd seen Vash with his shirt off, right before things really started going to hell. Just out of the shower, his hair wet and tousled...

The scars...

She could almost hear his voice, that gentle self-effacing voice.

 _It's not something I like girls to see. They'd probably run away._

And her reply:

 _I wouldn't run away._

But you did, didn't you, Meryl said to herself. You ran as far and as hard as you could. See what you get for running, little girl?

Oh, Vash, please don't be dead. Please let me see you again someday.

"Done?" Lamia asked, and Meryl nodded and wordlessly got in the car.

They came to a region of rough, broken country, where loose sand had deceptively smoothed out the terrain. They kept having to get out of the car and push it out of those sand-filled pits. By the time they were back on smoother ground, they'd lost sight of the smoke.

"I'm a good navigator," Lamia said, squinting at the sun. She was driving again. "I'll keep us going in the right direction."

And she did. The sun was setting behind the now-distant mountains when they finally got where they were going... and the sunset's blood-red light provided the perfect counterpoint for the scene of total devastation that greeted them.

The two girls climbed out of the car in silence, stunned by their shattered hopes as well as by the evidence of calamity around them. Bits of smoke still wafted from a charred metal skeleton that might once have been some kind of vehicle. They picked their way over blackened rocks, as the sun slipped beneath the edge of the world and shadows began to gather about them.

Lamia whispered, "Was it ... him?"

"I don't know. It could have been bandits," Meryl said, also dropping her voice. Twilight was gathering around them, and she kept jumping at shadows.

"Do you think they're gone?"

"Of course they're gone." They had to be gone. If they weren't gone, then she and Lamia were about to die horribly.

More horribly than dying of thirst in the desert...?

Lamia sank down on the ground in a quiet, closed-down despair. "This is it, then," she said. "We used up most of our gas getting here. We've barely got enough to make it back to the ship, if we're lucky. We'll have to walk..." She folded her arms on her knees and stared into the twilight.

"Maybe there's something around here we can use," Meryl said, refusing to give in to the depression that encroached on her soul like the nighttime shadows stealing away the light. "I don't see any bodies. It's possible that there are some survivors around."

"No one could have survived this."

"I'd rather do that than sit here feeling sorry for myself," Meryl retorted. She drew a derringer in each hand and started off into the darkness.

She'd gone maybe four steps when a great weight slammed into her from behind, knocking her flat to the ground. She felt a hand clamp around her arms and something hard and slick at her throat. "I'm really sorry about this," a voice said into her ear, "but I'm going to have to steal your car. No hard feelings, missy. Drop the guns, please."

" _Missy?_ Get off me! I'll sue you!"

"Meryl?" Lamia was shouting, somewhere out of sight. "Meryl, it's a bandit! Get away from him and I'll shoot him! I don't want to hit you!"

"Meryl?" the bandit repeated in a voice of amazement, and let go of her. Meryl scuttled a few feet away before realizing that she knew that voice. She turned around, astonished.

The man was crouched on hands and knees in the sand, staring at her. Meryl stared back. He was filthy, stripped to the waist, and his hair was a shaggy mess falling almost to his shoulders. And she knew him.

"Lamia!" Meryl screamed. "Don't sh--"

Too late.

The crack of the gunshot rolled across the hills and Wolfwood was knocked to the sand. "What the hell--?" he yelled, clutching at his leg. Blood seeped between his fingers.

Lamia was frantically chambering another bullet. "Next one goes through your heart unless you drop the knife right now--"

"Lamia! No! Stop! I know him! He's a friend of mine!" _A dead friend, but compared to some of the things that have happened to me lately, this is almost normal..._

Neither of them paid any attention to her. Wolfwood was cursing at Lamia in at least three different languages. Lamia showed no signs of lowering the rifle. "Don't make me shoot you through the mouth to shut you up," she said.

"Calm down!" Meryl stepped between them, thinking, with a feeling of unreality, _Is this me playing PEACEMAKER? What's this world coming to?_

Lamia reluctantly pointed the rifle towards the sand. "As long as he apologizes for those names he called me."

Wolfwood practically exploded. "APOLOGIZE? To you? _You_ shot _me,_ you little dipstick!"

The rifle came up again. "You attacked Meryl and tried to steal our car!"

"I didn't know I knew you people! Come to think of it," he added, his eyes narrowing, "I don't know _you._ "

"You do know her," Meryl said, falling to her knees in the sand beside him. "You gave food to her and her sister, on the bus shortly after we met you... remember?"

"You're that kid?" Wolfwood said in disbelief.

"You're the priest?" Lamia said at the same time, and she added, "I don't remember you being such a bad-tempered bastard."

" _What?_ You _shot_ me! You're lucky to be alive! If I'd known you'd turn out to be such a little bitch, I would've let you starve."

"Is that right!" Lamia yelled, finger on the trigger.

"You two are like a couple of children," Meryl snapped.

"Oh, yeah, look who's talking," Wolfwood said. "The PMS Queen. Mistress of the highly caffienated sarcastic comeback."

"What are you talking about?" Meryl seized him by two fistfuls of hair and shook him. "I have learned -- to control -- my temper!"

Lamia started laughing. "Sounds to me like he knows you really well, Miss Meryl!"

"Oh, shut up." Meryl let go of Wolfwood's hair and he slumped back down.

"Ow..."

"How bad are you hurt, anyway?"

"Dunno. Stings like hell."

Meryl bit her lip when she saw that his pants leg was soaked with blood. "I think -- I think the bullet went right through--"

"You have no idea," Wolfwood grumbled. "It's dark and you can't see a damn thing. You're just saying that."

"Were you always this annoying?" Meryl snapped.

"Your friend just shot me! Cut me some slack!"

"Sorry," Meryl said, and suddenly, to her own shock, she hugged him. His body was hard and thin, scraped and abraded, completely filthy, with dirty bandages tied around his forearms and hands. He stiffened in surprise, then hugged her back, hard.

It felt wonderful.

"I don't know how you survived," Meryl murmured into his hair. "But I'm glad to see you..."

"Good to see you too," he mumbled back. "What have you been up to these past six years, little insurance girl?"

Meryl pushed him gently away and wiped her eyes with her hand. "Not a lot. Got promoted -- a desk job."

Wolfwood grinned. "I always knew you'd be an administrator someday... if you could avoid annoying your bosses too much."

Meryl started to shoot back an annoyed reply, but Lamia interrupted. "This is all happy and sappy and everything, but in case you hadn't noticed, we've got serious problems to worry about."

" _You've_ got problems?" Wolfwood waved his hand at his leg. "This hurts like hell, you know. I think the only reason I'm not screaming my head off is that I've gotten used to being in extreme physical discomfort over the last day and a half. I don't suppose you have first aid supplies in your car, do you? And food? Water? It isn't just for myself," he added.

"There's someone else here?" Meryl asked.

Wolfwood bowed his head and his shaggy hair hid his face in the moonlight. "Meryl, I don't know how to prepare you for what you're about to see. Help me up, huh?"

She got him to his feet, leaning heavily on her. He was unable to put any weight on his leg. "I don't believe this," Wolfwood muttered. "I survived hand-to-hand combat with Knives only to get shot by this little idiot."

Lamia played with one of the bullets from the rifle, walking it over her knuckles. "Don't tempt me, priest-man."

"We do have a first-aid kit," Meryl said, helping him to the car. He leaned against the fender while she dug in the back.

"And water?" he asked hopefully.

Meryl handed him a canteen. "My God, your fingers are freezing. And you're shaking."

"I think I'm going into shock," he said, and drank. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold the canteen. Meryl had to help him.

"For cryin' out loud," Lamia said, thrusting a blanket in Wolfwood's direction. "It's going to be cold out here soon. We don't want to have to carry you."

"Th-thanks for the concern," he said sarcastically, wrapping it around his shoulders.

"I'll fix your leg," Meryl said, starting to kneel on the sand. "Sit down! If you're actually going into shock, you'll just make it worse standing up like that."

He sat, but took the bandages out of her hands. "Look, I can do that. You -- you've got somewhere else to go. Someone else to take water to. You shouldn't be tending me when there's another hurt worse than I am."

Meryl stared at him. She read the bad news in his eyes. "It's Vash, isn't it?" she whispered.

Wolfwood nodded, using his knife to tear away at the leg of his pants. "He's been badly burned. He's hanging on, but he's sinking... We had very little water, no food, no blankets. I've been trying to figure out whether to walk for help, but I figured I wouldn't make it in my condition. When I heard your engine, I thought my prayers had been answered." There was an ironic weight on his words.

"So if you were trying to steal our car, why didn't you just take it when we walked away?" Lamia inquired, leaning against the vehicle.

Wolfwood chuckled faintly. "Hey, I tried! I couldn't hotwire it with my hands like this. Figured I'd have to find the owners and try to take the keys by force. Uh, Meryl? You okay?"

Meryl was standing, but she didn't remember getting to her feet. "Where is he?" Her voice seemed to come from very far away.

Wolfwood pointed. "There's a little crevice under those rocks. Sheltered from the sun and wind. That's where we've been-- hey, you're not listening."

Meryl had picked up a canteen in one hand and a blanket in the other, and started in the direction Wolfwood had pointed.

"Hey, you want me to come with you?" Lamia called.

"No!" Meryl shot over her shoulder. "I can handle this."

"Fine. I'll help _you._ " Lamia leaned the rifle against the car and bent over Wolfwood with a look of glee on her face.

"No! Meryl! For the love of God! Don't leave me alone with HER!"

Meryl paid no attention. Her steps came faster and faster, until she was running, the canteen bumping against her side, short hair whipping in the desert wind.

Vash! Vash! Please wait for me --

 _What am I doing?_

She skidded to a halt.

This is stupid. I'm helping out an injured friend, no, not even a friend, an acquaintance, yes, that's it. Injured through his own stupidity, I'm sure. He probably doesn't deserve my help, but I'll help anyway, because I -- because I--

 _Because it's my fault._

My fault for leaving.

Meryl didn't notice the tears running down her cheeks and drying in the wind.

 _Oh, Vash, I'm so sorry..._

She found him lying at the base of the rocks, where Wolfwood had indicated. He was covered with a black leather jacket -- must be Wolfwood's, Meryl thought, since it didn't look like anything Vash would wear. She couldn't see much of him, just some scruffy blond hair, very pale in the moonlight. What she could see of his arms and legs were wrapped with crude bandages like Wolfwood's.

 _Poor Vash..._

Meryl bent over him, and bit her lip when she saw his face, fresh tears welling up in her eyes and blurring the horrifying damage. His hair... burned partly away... his skin... charred and peeling...

 _Who could have done this?_

But she knew. She knew.

 _I'll kill them. I'll kill them all._

"Vash," she called softly.

He stirred a little, mumbled something through cracked and swollen lips.

"Vash. It's me. Meryl Stryfe. Remember me?" Her voice broke. What if he didn't remember her at all? What if she'd never meant anything to him... what if he'd forgotten her as soon as she left?

His lips moved again, and she leaned closer. One word.

"Rem?"

"No. Meryl. I'm here to help you." She swallowed her tears behind her pride, and held the canteen to his lips, poured out little drips of water. _It doesn't matter if he has forgotten me. All that matters now is getting him well..._ "Drink for me, Vash. It'll be all right. You'll be all right. I promise."


	23. Rescue

When Knives had first met Sand, he had not known who she was.

Tony had taken Knives and Ellie to an abandoned Jeep, where he ordered Knives to take out the white case in the back and carry it. The case was immensely heavy. Knives recognized immediately that it was the twin to the white case of the Genesis Machine that they had discovered on the ship, but for once he managed to keep his mouth shut, and hoped that his shock had not been registered too plainly on his face.

They had walked all night, climbing into the hills. Ellie began to cry in small, hopeless sobs. The poor child was so tired she kept falling down. Finally Knives picked her up and carried her in his other arm.

Once in a while he glanced back at Tony, who walked in silence, as if in a world of his own. His yellow eyes stared at nothing. Sometimes he stumbled and caught himself.

 _If he passes out... we have to be ready to run..._

But he didn't pass out, just kept climbing. They emerged on top of the plateau. Knives stared in wonder at the twisted stone shapes, gleaming in the moonlight like broken bones.

"I found this place years ago," Tony said. His hoarse voice grated in his throat.

"Who carved this?" Knives asked, gazing up at a stone bridge as they walked under it.

Tony laughed shortly. He seemed a bit more expansive and talkative now that they were away from the ship. "No one. The wind did this. Over more years than you could hope to imagine. This is a dead world, my friend; a world with no oceans, no water, no ice, at least not until humans showed up and mucked up its sterile perfection."

"Ah. I see." After a moment, Knives said, "Aren't you human?"

"Yes, but I understand my place in the world. As most do not."

"It's human nature to strive for something better than one has," Knives said.

Tony laughed again. "And how would you know that? I may be human, but you aren't."

"How do you know what I am?"

"I know more than you could imagine," Tony said.

He fell silent again, and they walked through the forest of stone, eventually finding a path that wound down the side of a cliff, and ended on a flat lip of stone overlooking a valley. The cliff beneath them looked as if it had been sheared off with a giant meat cleaver, and huge pieces of stone could be seen jumbled at the foot of the cliff. Some cataclysm had happened here, at some unknown point in the past -- no way to judge, without vegetation or running water to erode the rock. The suns were beginning to rise, filling the valley with golden light.

"Sit," Tony said.

He took his own advice, sitting on a rock and looking down into the valley.

"What are we--" Knives began.

Tony gave him a look of hate from his hooded yellow eyes. "Be quiet. Dawn is a sacred thing, not to be profaned by one such as you."

Knives set the white case down carefully and gathered Ellie into his lap, where she whimpered once and fell asleep. They sat with Tony and watched the rays of gold sweep across the valley.When both suns were above the horizon, Tony turned to look at Knives. "Lovely, don't you agree, false master?"

"It was beautiful," Knives agreed. But in a harsh, lonesome kind of way, he thought. Nothing softened the rugged sweep of the rock.

Tony got up and walked to the edge of the cliff.

"You'd never guess that there used to be a lab here."

"Here?" Knives said.

Tony nodded, and waved his arm into the empty space. "Six years ago, if you'd climbed over that hill, you would have seen exactly what you see here, only the shelf upon which we stand extended a few hundred feet farther out. But under it, hidden from prying eyes, the place bustled with activity. Two hundred people lived here, give or take a few. All of them willing to die for our Master if he should ever give the command."

"You were one of them?" Knives said.

Tony smiled, and laced his hands behind his back. "Yes. And one of the most loyal, though I came but late to this place. Do you want to hear how it happened? Or do you remember?"

"I remember nothing," Knives said.

"Indeed, you must not." Tony paced on the lip of the cliff. "I'd been exploring the area around the ship, again. As I so often did, in those days, after my revenge upon Nadia's kin was complete, and my Angie had left me. I had nowhere to go and little to do. And so I became aware of comings and goings from this part of the plateau. Sometimes I would see vehicle tracks in the sand, well hidden, but there nonetheless. Or I'd glimpse someone from a distance, but by the time I got there, they would be gone."

He gazed pensively off at the mountains. "Eventually -- it was only a matter of time, I suppose -- I found one of their entrances. And imagine my shock at what I found! A hidden laboratory, here in this most desolate place, filled with lost technology and workers! It was almost like being back on Earth. Of course, they caught me and they were going to kill me."

Tony tilted his head back, his face filled with rapture. "But then -- _He_ appeared. Radiant, gold and white... He stood above me, and I fell to the ground with fear. And then He spoke to me... He asked me if I knew how to open the door to the ship on the other side of the plateau.

"I said that I did!

"He agreed to let me live, if I would let them into the ship so that they could search it for equipment they could use. I was afraid they wouldn't understand when they found the bodies of Nadia and her family, but He only smiled when he saw that. They took what they needed from the ship... just a few things, components they hadn't been able to manufacture..."

Tony's voice trailed off. He squinted up at the bright sky, and then, to Knives' shock, dropped to his knees in the sand.

"He comes," he whispered. "Kneel, you fool!"

Knives got down into the sand, gently dislodging Ellie, who folded onto the ground bonelessly without waking up.

Looking the way Tony had been looking, he saw a dark speck against the sky, growing rapidly larger. Some kind of vehicle? Squinting, he could make out two people on it.

The vehicle settled to the cliff edge in a cloud of sand. One of the riders leaped off immediately: a slim girl wrapped in a ragged brown cloak. She was carrying a silver gun in one hand, which she tucked away beneath her cloak.

The other rider, a haggard-looking woman, climbed down more slowly.

Ellie had woken at the sound of the vehicle and began to whimper. Knives hushed her. The haggard woman approached them, then froze, staring at Ellie with wide, astonished eyes.

Ellie clung to Knives' leg.

Recovering from her shock, the woman knelt down and reached a hand out to the little girl. Ellie hesitated, then responded: her mother might not be here, but she definitely knew a mom when she saw one. She crossed the space between them and let the woman hug her.

Meanwhile, the girl in the cloak crossed the sand and placed her hand lightly on Tony's forehead. "You have done well," she said. "You may be the only one that I have left... but a drop of rain grows around a single speck of dust, doesn't it, and creates a thunderstorm?"

"Yes, Master," Tony said, his eyes closed, basking in the girl's presence. "Thank you, Master."

The girl turned, and saw Knives. Her reaction was unexpected, to say the least. All the blood drained from her pale face, leaving her white as chalk.

"Legato... what is _this_ doing here?" she whispered.

A glimmer of humor flickered across Tony's face. "It followed me home, Master."

 

* * *

 

"Stop the truck," Kaite said.

Millie, in the driver's seat, turned to him with a look of surprise. "Huh?"

"Stop the truck. No. Not here, in the open, f'r cryin' out loud. Pull behind that rock."

Millie heaved a sigh of total exasperation, but did as he had instructed. "Why?"

"We're getting close to the ship. We'd better walk from here. The truck raises too much of a dust cloud."

Millie nodded, subdued. They both climbed down from the truck and stood for a moment, stretching out the kinks of the road.

 _Here we are,_ Millie thought. _Soon... soon we'll meet Legato again. We'll probably die._

She couldn't get her mind to accept the idea.

 _So... MAYBE we'll die. But if we are very smart and resourceful, we may live, and we may save all of humanity._

I don't care about humanity. I just want to see my little girl.

"Coming?" Kaite said.

"Coming."

"Here."

Kaite brought a shotgun from under the truck's seat and handed it to her.

"I prefer my stungun, thanks."

Kaite shook his head. "Carry it if you like, but also take a weapon with killing power. We're not going into a battle where you take prisoners, Millie."

Reluctantly, Millie accepted the shotgun and slung it over her shoulder. She still preferred to carry her stungun, which Kaite had given back to her. Kaite himself had a rifle with an oddly flared muzzle.

"What's that?" Millie asked.

"One of my inventions. It packs a whallop, I'll just say that much. Dunno from how far away Tony can do that weird mind thing, but if we can get a clear shot anywhere near him, it'll all be over."

They started walking, picking their way over rough rocks. Soon, they came upon an abandoned Jeep, rolled against the rocks with no effort made to hide it. Kaite's Jeep.

Millie ducked and flattened against a boulder, gripping her stungun in both hands. Kaite, however, made no attempt to hide. He walked over to the vehicle and laid his palm flat against its hood. "It's cool, so it's been here for... hours, at least, maybe days. He went directly here, then... much faster than we could have traveled. Damn."

"What now?"

Kaite shook his head. "I guess we go on. We'll have to forget about ambushing him from inside the ship, though."

Then he gasped and gripped Millie's arm. "Back! Now! Get down! Don't move!"

Millie didn't point out that those directions were mutually exclusive. She just ducked as he indicated, dropping beside him in the shadow of a boulder.

"What? What is it?"

"Look."

Kaite pointed skyward. Millie squinted, and finally saw a rapidly moving black dot, sweeping over the mountain peaks.

"What is that? Some kind of bird?"

"It's not a bird. It's Tony's flying machine. Got to be. Nothing else could be that big or flying that high."

"Flying machine?" Millie repeated.

"Shhh. Keep your voice down."

The two of them watched in silence as the black object passed over them, low enough that Millie could make out its flattened elliptical shape, and even dimly discern two small figures upon it. Then it disappeared over the cliff behind them.

"Funny," Kaite murmured, staring after it. "Neither of those people looked the right size to be Tony. I wonder if he's got other crash survivors that he meets out here? Weird..."

He walked toward the cliff. Millie followed.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"I'm going to climb."

"You saw how fast that ... thing was moving. They're probably long gone."

Kaite shook his head. "No. Wherever they were going, I bet it's somewhere around here. I don't believe in coincidence. Tony's flyer originally came from the ship. What we just saw was his flyer, or another from the same place, and they didn't just happen to be flying over this particular area. Their headquarters must be around here somewhere."

The two of them picked their way along the base of the cliff until they found a rockslide that provided a rough, but navigable, path to the top. The desert wind whipped at their bodies as they climbed, and Millie pictured the two of them, like tiny ants crawling along the side of the huge cliff... Once she turned and looked down, and then looked away, gulping at the great expanse of desert spreading beneath them.

When they made it to the top, though, Millie had to turn around and walk to the edge, gasping in delight at the yellow sand spreading to the horizon. She had never, ever, in her entire life, been this high up. Sighing in wonder, she turned from the lovely view to see where they had ended up. They were standing on a sort of mesa, scoured by the wind into a fantasy garden of strange and wondrous shapes. Beyond the twisting rock towers, more mountains towered until their peaks seemed to scrape the sky.

"Wowww..." Millie whispered.

"Only you," said Kaite with a sigh, "could look forward to abrupt violent death with 'wow'."

"Just because we're going to confront a killer," Millie snapped, "is no reason that we can't appreciate the natural beauty around us."

"Oh. Right. You're a mom. I forgot."

They started walking across the mesa, entering the garden of wind-sculpted rocks. Millie couldn't help thinking that it wasn't too surprising Legato came to this place. All these stones, warped into shapes that were surely never intended for them...

Yet it was beautiful, in a cold and austere way that made it clear humanity was never meant to come here, was no more than a footnote in the harsh history of this world.

Millie shivered and hurried to catch up to Kaite.

"So if Leg-- Tony has a machine that can fly," she said, settling the shotgun over her shoulder and the familiar weight of the stungun in her arms, "why did he have to take your Jeep?"

"I've been wondering that myself," Kaite admitted. "Obviously he no longer had it the last time we saw him. It's possible, I suppose, that whoever we just saw fly over isn't Tony. Some scavenger could have come upon the ship and found a way in. Tony said once that there might be more flyers in an undamaged cargo bay that we hadn't found or couldn't get to."

Kaite drummed his fingers on the butt of his gun. "I keep wondering what happened to Tony, between the last time I saw him in March City, and the way he looked in the canyon. He'd clearly been in a fight with somebody. I'm sure Tony had technology that would blow up a mountain -- but dammit! I can't imagine him doing it without a reason! Especially on top of himself."

"He killed your gang without a reason," Millie said quietly. _If he's Legato, he wouldn't need a reason._

Kaite sighed. "Maybe I just want to believe that he'd met somebody who could rough him up that bad. I simply cannot believe that there's no way to kill the guy. Get a bullet in him, and he'll die as fast as anyone else."

"Of course," Millie said quietly, but she was thinking of Legato. She'd seen him die with a bullet in his brain. There was no question that he had been dead. And now this Tony guy showed up with Legato's powers... it was terrifying. What if he really couldn't be killed?

"So what does --" she began, but Kaite held up a hand to stop her. Millie closed her mouth, and after a moment, an errant breeze brought her a snatch of voices, not too far away.

Kaite motioned for silence, and the two of them crept forward through the frozen forest of stone. Soon they came to a gap in the rocks, and, side by side, peered down.

They were near the edge of the mesa, which turned out to be not much of a mesa, but more of a small butte. Below them, the butte dropped in a series of ragged steps to a narrow, barren valley, and then the real mountains rose into the sky, ten thousand feet or more, unbroken by the softness of vegetation, unmarked by leaping waterfalls. Only rock, solid rock, so much rock that its great weight seemed to press down upon the two humans, as if the mountain wall was leaning inexorably towards them. An ile or more across the valley, every rock on the far mountainside stood out sharp and clear in the crystalline desert air, and Millie had to remind herself of the immense scale, that the stones which looked small and close enough to pick up in her hand were actually the size of city buildings.

A sharp intake of breath from Kaite drew her attention to something much closer than the mountains. Just beneath them, the butte dropped about thirty feet in a slope of scree and talus, and then there was a ledge overlooking the valley.

Millie's grip tightened on the stungun.

Tony.

He stood at the edge, so near to the drop that it seemed the buffeting wind would catch his slight frame and send him tumbling over the edge. The sheer scale of the mountains reduced him to a narrow sliver of black, outlined against the red and yellow rocks.

A target.

Near him, another figure stood, its long blond hair whipping in the wind off the mountains. Millie knew who this must be, knew even before he turned his head and she caught a glimpse of that impossibly Vash-like face. She had been right all along, and wished she hadn't. Tony, or Legato, or whoever he was, had indeed led them to Knives.

But there were other people on the ledge.

Near Tony and Knives, another person was standing beside a strange, gleaming contraption that Millie supposed must be the flying machine. Millie thought the stranger was a girl, but it was hard to tell, since his or her body was wrapped in a ragged brown cloak, and long blond hair hid the face. This person was the one whose voice they'd heard back among the rocks. He or she was talking to Knives and Tony; the wind brought incomprehensible snatches of a voice that was light and even, neither male nor female.

Beyond that person, a woman was sitting on the ground, crosslegged, with the air of one waiting for something to happen. There was a child with her.

Millie squinted at that child, and felt her heart flip over, even before the reality slowly percolated through a brain frozen into immobility with the sheer impossibility of the thing.

No. No. Not possible.

Knives turned back from the edge and walked over towards the woman and child. With each step, Millie's sense of unreality and horror grew.

This couldn't be happening. This must be a nightmare. She was asleep somewhere, and the last few days had been just a dream, and soon she'd wake up, yes, wake up please, wake up now...

Knives bent over, and touched the little dark-haired girl, tilted the child's head back, and Millie caught a glimpse of the child's face, and she wanted to scream or throw up or kill somebody. But she couldn't move. She was frozen as surely as by Tony's uncanny powers, but this time, it was a paralysis of the heart.

Ellie. That child... was her daughter.

And Knives was _touching her._

Next to her, Kaite was aiming his flare-muzzled gun, resting it in a crack in the rocks. Millie's trembling hands dropped the stungun. It wasn't a stungun that she wanted. Kaite had been right all along. They were playing for keeps out in this lonely country.

Softly, not making a sound, Millie swung the shotgun from her back, and took aim.

 

* * *

 

"I want Mommie," the little girl whispered.

"I know," Angie said softly to her. "But you have to be a big girl now, all right? Big girl for Mommie?"

She put an arm around the girl, her natural mothering talents coming to the fore. The child snuggled against her, and Angie wondered what had happened to her parents. Probably killed by Tony. The little girl's weird resemblance to Lucas had given her a shock at first, but she'd come to the conclusion that it was just her imagination. Of course she was going to see her murdered son in every child she met.

The tall blond guy left Tony and that other girl, and came over to Angie and the little girl. He looked so much like Vash, it was creepy. Could they be related somehow? Angie wondered.

As if in response to her thoughts, the child whimpered, "Vash!"

Angie jumped.

The blond guy squatted down and cupped the little girl's chin in his palm. "Are you all right? Hungry? Thirsty?"

The girl shook her head. "I want Mommie, Mister Vash. I want to go home."

 _It's not possible,_ Angie thought. _His name couldn't possibly be Vash too._ Then she had a horrifying thought: _What if this guy is the real Vash? The outlaw? The Humanoid Typhoon?_

"You just be a brave girl for Mommie, little one," Angie said again, stroking the girl's hair.

The man who looked so much like Vash smiled at her, and she saw Vash very strongly in his gentle smile. "Her name is Ellie."

"Are you her father?"

He shook his head. "Just a ... friend of the family."

Angie jerked her head towards Tony and the strange girl. "Are you with them?"

"No," he said, so fervently that she couldn't help but believe him.

Angie hesitated, then held a hand out. "I'm Angie."

He took her hand, a bit awkwardly, as if he had never shaken hands before. "I'm Va -- I mean, I'm Kni-- I -- Well, I don't really have a name."

He looked so wretched that Angie couldn't bring herself to ask how that was possible. "Well ... it's nice to meet you anyhow. What should I call you?"

The blond man looked away from her, looking, if possible, even more miserable. "I don't know."

This guy definitely could match Vash in the "weird" department. "Hmmm. I guess I could call you... I guess I could call you ... Damn, I've got to call you something. How about Eric."

He raised his eyebrows, looking very much like Vash in his innocent, startled guise. "Eric? Any particular reason?"

"No. I've never met an Eric in my life. I wouldn't want to call you by the name of anyone I've actually known." She smiled slightly. "Most of them weren't very nice people."

The guy she'd dubbed Eric smiled faintly back, and Angie decided that she liked him, and not just because he reminded her of Vash. Maybe she was wrong about him ... she'd been wrong before... but he seemed like a nice person.

Then everything happened all at once.

There was a crack like distant thunder, and Angie just had time to turn her head and think _But there are no thunderstorms on this world_ \-- before fire, smoke and noise blossomed on the lip of the cliff, washing out Angie's world in light and sound. Gravel pelted her, burning like tiny meteors on her skin, leaving bleeding streaks -- she shielded Ellie with her own body, and then the man who looked like Vash stumbled against her, and something splattered on her face that wasn't gravel -- it was warm and wet, and she looked up in shock to see that he was holding his arm with blood running off his fingers.

"Get down!" he yelled at her, and Angie scrambled, with Ellie, for the shelter of the rocks. Eric dropped down beside her, breathing heavily.

"Are you all right?" Angie asked him, staring at his bloody arm.

"Someone's shooting at us. Poor bastards. I hope it's not... it couldn't be... No, Meryl and Lamia wouldn't have shot at _me."_ He seemed to be thinking aloud. "Bandits, perhaps."

Angie stared at the spot where Tony had been, as the smoke cleared. The lip of the cliff where he'd been standing had been sheared away, and there was no sign of him. The flyer was just a twisted hunk of metal. Was it possible -- could he actually be --

"I need to borrow something for a moment," said a quiet, familiar voice behind her.

Angie jumped and almost screamed. Tony was crouched among the rocks, looking even more battered than before -- now his hair was sticking off at odd angles, and soot smudged his face along with the dirt and lingering bruises -- but entirely alive. There was no sign of Sand, however.

"I need this," Tony said, snatching Ellie out of Angie's grasp.

"Hey! No! Tony, you bastard, no! Not another kid!"

Eric let go of his injured arm and seized Tony's wrist with his bloody hand. Tony turned on him, and Angie's breath stopped. _He's going to kill him ..._ But Tony just stared at the other man, his golden eyes burning with hatred -- and a small flicker of fear. Nothing happened.

"I order you to let that girl go," Eric said softly.

 _What the hell is going on here?_ Angie wanted to ask.

"I don't take orders from you," Tony said, very quietly, his face a cold mask, and tugged his wrist free of Eric's grip.

Ellie, who had been whimpering softly, chose that moment to twist around and kick Tony hard in the shins. Tony dropped her and she ran like a little rabbit, up into the rocks.

"Oh, for crying out --" Tony stretched his hand after her, and Angie could see his fingers trembling. _He doesn't just look tired, he IS tired, and hurt..._

Ellie screamed. She was wrenched free of her hiding place and lifted into the air.

"No!" Eric bellowed, throwing himself onto Tony from behind. Ellie gave a little squeak and dropped onto the rocks, started to tumble down the hill, but caught herself.

"Honey! Run!" Angie yelled at her, and started running herself. Halfway up the hill, she looked over her shoulder. Eric was grappling with Tony. Angie was torn -- she had to help Ellie get away, but she couldn't just leave him there --

Suddenly the rocks by her foot exploded, showering her with gravel. Angie looked up in shock to see an unfamiliar woman standing at the top of the hill, hastily pumping another round into the beat-up shotgun in her hands. Ellie was about halfway between them, frozen and staring at Angie. She hadn't seen the strange woman yet.

"Ellie, hon," Angie said, "stay very still."

The woman finished reloading -- damn, Angie thought, seeing another opportunity for escape slip away -- and lowered the shotgun to point at Angie's head.

"You stay right there," the woman said, her voice rising out of control and cracking. Ellie's head swiveled around at the sound of the voice. "Take another step and I'll blow you to pieces. I'm not joking."

"I can see that," Angie said softly. The woman's eyes were enormous, the pupils expanded until only the thinnest ring of iris was visible. She was clearly furious.

"I saw you talking to Knives. I know you're one of them--"

"Mommie!" Ellie cried, scrambling to her feet.

The shotgun woman's voice faltered, and tears pooled in her eyes. "Oh, Ellie..." The shotgun started to waver; then she jerked it up, firming her chin, keeping the muzzle trained on Angie's forehead. "I said stay there!" she snapped. "No, honey, not you," to Ellie.

Angie felt sweat dampen her neck. She heard another explosion behind her, but didn't dare look around to see what was happening. Had Eric been killed? Had Tony? Was she going to die from behind, or at the hands of the shotgun woman?

"Ellie, come here," the shotgun woman said, her voice shaking, but her hands steady.

But Ellie didn't move. "Mommie?" she faltered.

The woman's voice rose to a scream. "Ellen Philomela Wolfwood Thompson, get your little butt up here now!"

Some voices must be obeyed. Ellie was already climbing before the last word rang out into the desert morning.

"I don't know who you are, but I'm not your enemy," Angie said. "I tried to help your little girl."

"Don't say a word. I -- I -- Get up here! But stay away from my daughter."

Angie climbed, right behind Ellie. The shotgun woman put a protective arm around Ellie, hugging the little girl close to her body. Angie drew herself warily over the edge of the hill.

"I'm not your enemy," she said.

"Be quite." The woman glared at her, gripping Ellie tightly and protectively.

"Ask her," Angie said, nodding towards the little girl.

"She's nice, Mommie," the child mumbled into her mother's skirt.

"I -- I don't know." The woman stared at Angie. Angie stared back. The world had fallen quiet. There were no more explosions. Angie knew that the battle had resolved itself somehow, with no input from the two of them. She half expected Tony's iron control to settle over her body at any moment... but it didn't.

"This way," the woman said, motioning with the shotgun. Angie obeyed. The two of them rounded a spur of rock, and Angie froze, seeing out of the corner of her eye that the shotgun woman had done the same.

Sand straightened up slowly from the body of the large dark-haired man sprawled at her feet. An odd, flare-muzzled gun lay near his hand. His body was twisted and bloody; she must have come upon him from behind.

"Kaite," the shotgun woman gasped in a strangled voice, at the same time as Angie recognized him, and her hand flew to her mouth.

Sand smiled at them. "How painfully easy," she said softly. "So trusting..."

Her face was like a skull with the skin stretched over the bones. It was hard to believe that she was alive at all. But the eyes were alive -- blue eyes, glowing just faintly in the sunshine.

"And now it's your turn," she said in that same quiet voice, reaching her hand out towards them.

"No!" Angie screamed, horrible memories flashing behind her eyes -- blue light, Alex Saverem's body bursting into flames.... "Don't let her! Damn it, stop her!"

The shotgun woman already had the weapon raised to her shoulder. All she had to do was fire. And she did.

She blew Sand's right hand off.

Sand stared at the stump of her own arm, as if pain was something she'd never experienced before. There was a fine spray of blood across her face.

Angie glanced over at the shotgun woman to see that her face was chalk-white. "I-- I didn't --" the shotgun woman stammered. "I -- I forgot that I -- My stungun never did that --"

"That's not a stungun you've got there, honey," Angie said.

Sand staggered backwards and fell onto her rump, still staring at her wrist. Then she looked up at them. "Millie Thompson," she said coolly. "Yes, I remember you, little human. You've acquired a new weapon, I see. And you've damaged my nice body with it. This will require some work... dammit."

With that, her body... turned sideways, blurred and faded, the colors ran together like a watercolor in the rain and she was gone. Angie stared.

"What the--" the shotgun woman -- Millie -- gasped.

Hesitantly, they crept to the edge of the butte and looked down. The ledge below was deserted. There was no sign of either Tony, or the man Angie had dubbed "Eric."

Angie shivered. Tony. He wasn't dead. She knew it. Could he even die?

She looked over at the woman called Millie, to find that she had laid down her shotgun and lifted Kaite's body in her arms.

Kaite...

He was alive. He stirred, took a gasping breath. His face and lips were bloody.

"Don't try to talk," Millie said.

Kaite whispered something. Angie approached softly.

"... underestimated them, underestimated them badly," Kaite whispered. "I didn't realize that she was with Tony until too late."

"It's not your fault," Millie said.

"I should have realized..." He gasped in pain.

"But I found my daughter," Millie said. "I got my little girl back. Thanks to you."

Kaite smiled faintly. "I'm glad. Listen... you should try to get to the ship... I'll tell you how to --"

"I know where the ship is," Angie said, leaning over Millie's shoulder. "I can lead them."

"Well, well," Kaite whispered. "You're alive."

"I am." She reached down and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "If we can get you to the ship--"

Kaite tried to shake his head, and winced at the movement. "No chance. Sorry. I think I've about had it. I'm sorry I can't help you girls... fight them..."

His eyes drifted shut. Millie bowed her head, stifling a sob.

"I'll take care of him," Angie said quietly to Millie. "You take care of her." She gestured with her head to Ellie, who was sitting by herself, a little ways away.

Millie didn't even argue -- she must be in shock. She just got up and went to her daughter. Angie lowered Kaite's head gently to the sand. Poor boy. Poor, poor boy. She looked up at the blank blue sky overhead, and wondered how many more people had to die before Tony was stopped.

 _I will kill Tony. It is my right and my responsibility. I don't care if I die in the attempt. I'll find a way._


	24. Only Human

The car ran out of gas before they'd gone very far. Lamia cursed, rather eloquently, as it ground to a halt.

Wolfwood looked over his shoulder into the backseat, where Meryl sat quietly, her head bowed, with Vash's head resting in her lap.

"How is he?"

"Still unconscious," Meryl said, looking up, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes and her voice.

Lamia beat her fist on the steering wheel. "Well, I guess we walk from here."

They got out into the stillness of the desert night.

"The question..." Lamia said, her voice sounding loud in the silence. "The question is, are we closer to the ship, or to this city that Wolfwood's spoken of?"

"The ship," Meryl said. "No doubt."

"Let's go, then."

Lamia and Meryl carried Vash's unconscious body between them, while Wolfwood limped along after them.

"How are you doing?" Meryl asked him belatedly.

"Oh, fine. Fine. Leg hurts like hell. Hands hurt like hell. Haven't slept in at least two days. I'm peachy."

"You haven't changed," she snapped, and then hesitated. "No... you have."

"You too, insurance girl. You too."

"So you want to tell me how you survived?" Meryl hesitated, shifting Vash's weight into a more comfortable position. "We all thought you were dead."

"Long story. Looong story."

"We have time."

So Wolfwood told his story, as they trekked across the desert sands. When he got to the part where he'd woke up in the ship, Meryl interrupted.

"Tell me again about this place?"

He did. Meryl and Lamia exchanged glances.

"What?" Wolfwood said.

"I think that's where we're going," Meryl said.

And it was. When they topped a small rise and saw the bulk of the wrecked Seeds ship, dwarfed by the cliff, Wolfwood stared.

"Well, I'll be damned. I wonder if Angie..."

"Angie?" Meryl prompted.

"Never mind. We promised to meet here, if we were ever separated. I wonder if she'll keep her promise..."

They carried Vash to the ship, and Wolfwood watched with interest when Meryl typed the password. "Wolfwood? My name?"

"Believe me," Meryl said. "That is the least of how weird it gets around here."

They took Vash to the medical bay, and between them, figured out how to use some of the more familiar equipment -- at least they could give him an IV, and they found a spray container labeled "SynSkin(TM)" that they used on the more badly burned areas.

"He's going to have a whole new scar collection, though," Wolfwood said. "Hey, anybody want to help me with my leg before I fall over?"

They doctored him, and then Meryl sat down by Vash's head, and stroked the hair out of his eyes. The remains of his hair, that is.

Wait...

Meryl bent over Vash's face. No doubt about it. His hair was growing back. It was already a good inch long over most of the burned places.

"Hey," Wolfwood said. "What the heck...?"

Lamia had uncovered the Genesis Machine to make sure it was still present and accounted for. Wolfwood was staring at it.

"That's..." Wolfwood turned to her, and stared. "That's my uncle's gun."

"No, it's not," Lamia said. "It's the Genesis Machine."

"It's WHAT?"

"Miss Meryl, please explain to him."

Meryl didn't even look up from Vash. She was still smoothing back his spiky, scorched hair.

"Uh..." Wolfwood said, suddenly deciding that discretion was the better part of curiosity. "I think I'll go exploring. Make breakfast. Yeah. Sounds like a plan."

"I'll help you," Lamia said hastily.

"Nobody asked you."

"You got a problem with me or something?" Lamia demanded, shifting the rifle from hand to hand.

"Do you ever put that thing down?"

"I could put it down on your head. Hard."

Their voices faded away. Meryl grinned faintly. Obviously the temptation to yell at Lamia was not just an affliction that she herself suffered from. She hadn't said anything nasty to the girl in... oh, it must be hours now.

She'd had other things on her mind.

Her smile faded. She turned to Vash. His face was so pale... but looking closely, she saw that fresh pink skin had already begun to heal over the burned places. Like the hair growing back.

 _He heals fast, I guess. Come to think of it, he probably has to._

If he heals that fast, what kind of injuries must he have suffered to leave the scars I've seen?

Meryl touched Vash's forehead, and closed her eyes, lost in memories of Vash's many acts of courage and sacrifice. She was not aware of the tears dampening her closed lashes.

 

* * *

 

Lamia began telling Wolfwood her story while they made breakfast outside the ship.

He kept asking her to back up and explain things over again.

"Knives _what?"_

"I think I am starting to see," Lamia said, sulkily, "why ... Miss Meryl was so confused. That man in the ship does look an awful lot like Vash."

"He _is_ Vash, you little twit."

"Vash is the man I found in the desert," Lamia snapped.

"Look, you yourself admitted that he didn't know who he was. Now you run into another guy who looks just the same, and does know who he is and says that he's Vash. Doesn't that suggest anything to --"

"He hasn't said anything yet. He's been unconscious ever since I've seen him. Quite frankly, all I have to go on is your word, and you don't exactly look like the most trustworthy sort."

"How on earth are you still alive?" Wolfwood said, staring at her.

"What? Huh?"

"You've been traveling with Meryl," Wolfwood said, as if that explained everything, and then added, "I wouldn't even have thought there'd be enough left of the body to identify."

 _"What?"_

"Meryl," Wolfwood said, "has a low tolerance for annoying people. Real low. Record-breaking, actually."

"I should've shot you in the mouth."

Wolfwood mumbled something uncomplimentary, munching on his breakfast.

 _"I heard that! What kind of priest are you?"_

Eventually Lamia went to take Meryl her breakfast. Meryl was still sitting on the edge of Vash's bed, staring at him.

"Uh, food," Lamia said, setting the tray gently on a countertop. "Food. Right here."

"Thanks," Meryl murmured, never looking up.

"Uh, right. 'Bye."

She went back out to the campfire, but Wolfwood was gone. "Now where is that idiot?" Lamia muttered, kicking sand onto the flames.

She returned to the ship, stared for a moment at the door, and wished they had some way to lock it.

"Actually..."

All they really had to do was destroy the box with the typewriter keys, and nobody would be able to open the door. Of course, anyone who did such a thing would have to remain outside, with Tony. And everyone else would be stuck inside, like sardines in a can. Not a good situation.

Lamia sighed and opened the door.

Wolfwood was nowhere to be found. She even went into the Plant chamber looking for him, but the glowing thing did not acknowledge her presence, and she left quickly. It made her nervous, even though Vash had said it was safe.

No... not Vash. She had to remember that. She'd never in a million years admit that Meryl had been right... but...

Who _was_ her friend from the desert, anyway?

Having nothing else to do, and trying to stop herself from thinking, she explored. On another level of the ship, she came upon a small domed chamber made of some transparent substance thicker and harder than glass, protruding from the ship's side. Standing in it, she had a good view of the canyon and surrounding area. Lamia stared up into the hills and fretted, thinking about Vash -- _her_ Vash -- and the little girl in the grip of a madman.

 _We must help them, if they're even still alive. Somehow. But... how can we possibly fight that man..._

Lamia shivered. Her joints still twinged where the intruder had forced them to bend in ways they were never designed.

Still halfheartedly looking for Wolfwood, she wandered deeper into the ship. Soon she realized that these corridors didn't look at all familiar. "Where am I now?" she muttered under her breath.

She came to a closed door, and opened it. The room beyond was entirely dark. Something glimmered -- some kind of machinery? Hundreds of little glimmers in the dark. Lamia sensed that the room was quite large. She reached inside the door, feeling around, and quite by accident, triggered a light switch.

For a moment she stood stock-still, unable to move, staring at what the light revealed. Then she screamed and slammed the door.

 

* * *

 

"Meryl! M-M-Miss Meryl!"

Meryl looked up in surprise. Vash was sleeping quietly, and Meryl had begun exploring the room again, looking for anything else she recognized, like aspirin. It was quite obvious, however, that the medical bay had had most of its useful components stripped out over the years -- along with almost anything small enough to carry.

"Miss Meryl!"

Lamia burst in. She was carrying the rifle in both hands like a club. Her freckles stood out against her chalk-white skin. She stumbled to a halt and stared at Meryl as if she'd forgotten where she was.

"Lamia! What's wrong? Is it Tony?"

Lamia shook her head. "It's -- It's -- I -- There's...."

Then, to Meryl's utter shock, Lamia sank to her knees on the floor and began to cry in small, choked sobs of terror. She was on the verge of hysterics.

Meryl had never seen the tough orphan lose her head so completely. Drawn by sympathy, she sat down on the metal floor beside the girl and put an arm around her shoulders. "Lamia, shh, it's okay. What happened?"

Lamia looked up, sniffling, trying gamely to get control of herself. "Meryl, I found -- a -- a whole room full of --"

She almost broke down again.

"A room full of what?"

"Those monsters," Lamia whispered. "The monsters that tried to kill me and my sister."

"What monsters? What do you mean?"

Lamia looked up at her. For an instant she was young and vulnerable. "That -- that day in the desert... when -- when the bus driver found that priest, and, and those things -- those _things_ tried to take my sister..."

Meryl's stomach jumped into her throat. Memories surged to the surface -- a hot desert day, years ago, and a desperate race to outrun those metal creations with the guns that could shoot so far, so fast. Vash had explained afterwards that they were only manmade devices, but she still remembered the fear, like watching something from a nightmare come to life.

"You mean... there's some of those here?" Her voice cracked embarrassingly, and she cleared her throat and got control of herself. No point in both of them falling apart.

Lamia nodded.

"Out -- outside the ship?" Dammit, there her voice went again.

Lamia shook her head. "Inside," she whispered.

By fits and starts, Meryl got the story out of her. No wonder the poor kid was terrified. She'd come upon a whole roomful of the things. She'd closed the door before they saw her, she said, and ran away, fearing at each moment that she'd look around and see a forest of glowing red lights behind her...

Lamia was starting to calm down now. "But they didn't move at all when you opened the door?" Meryl asked.

Lamia shook her head. "It was like they were asleep."

Meryl was thinking, thinking hard -- remembering how, after Vash and Wolfwood had disappeared (fallen into that hole in the ground, as it turned out), the metal monsters had stopped chasing them. Going back to look for their missing companions, Meryl and Millie had seen several of the creatures lying on the ground, still as if dead.

At the time, Meryl had not understood. But she'd learned a lot, since then, about technology. A whole lot. The things that Vash had told her about the metal things, after getting him back on the bus, had made no sense at the time, but now she was beginning to understand. He'd said the creatures weren't alive. They were -- what had he said? Guardians. And when they realized that there was nothing to protect, they had stopped trying.

Another memory sprang into her head... a night during their travels with Wolfwood, when they'd all had a little too much to drink, and Vash and Millie had already passed out, but she and Wolfwood were still awake. He'd started talking about that place under the ground that he'd seen with Vash, rambling drunkenly about colorful lights and metal surfaces.

He had been describing a ship.

That's what that big hole in the ground was! There was a ship under there! Isn't it just like that stupid spiky-headed coward, to not tell us about it.... and that's what those things were, Meryl thought, amazed and gratified as it all came together in her head. Those things are guardians of the ships. So it's not surprising there are some of them here! I wonder if they could help protect us from Tony?

"Meryl?" Lamia said.

"Can you find your way back to the place where you found them?" Meryl asked.

Lamia recoiled. _"What?"_

She almost went over the edge again when Meryl started explaining her plan, but eventually, she began to understand what Meryl was saying. Reluctantly, Meryl left Vash alone, sleeping peacefully in the medical bay, and followed Lamia out into the corridor.

They looked for Wolfwood first, but there was no sign of him.

"You don't have any idea where he is?"

Lamia shook her head. "I told him about what had happened to us. I got up to the part where we found the Genesis Machine, and then I went to take you some food. When I came back, he was gone."

"When we found the Gen -- oh." Meryl put her hand over her mouth. "The people in the caskets. Oh, no. I didn't even think..."

"You think that's where he is?" Lamia shuddered. "How disgusting. Should we go get him?"

Meryl hesitated, then shook her head. "No. We can do this by ourselves. We shouldn't."

They retraced Lamia's steps. Lamia grew more and more hesitant as they approached the room she'd found, and started hiding behind Meryl, gripping the rifle tightly. By the time they got to the door, Lamia looked like she was ready to flee down the corridor at the drop of a pin.

Meryl opened the door. It wasn't dark. The light had stayed on after Lamia had fled, and it revealed a square, utilitarian metal room, obviously a storage bay of some kind. From wall to wall it was filled with those unmoving metal hulks.

Lamia squeaked in fear, and shrank behind Meryl. But Meryl stood still, staring up at the strange, jointed limbs of the nearest ones. She felt a little fear, but mostly just curiosity.

It's true, she thought. They're just like cars or doors. They don't act independently. They just do what they're told.

Still, she felt rather relieved when she closed the door and could no longer see them. Lamia sighed and leaned against the wall.

"They won't hurt us," Meryl said.

"So you say," Lamia retorted.

There was nothing to do now, though, but find someone who knew how to operate them -- Vash, or possibly Wolfwood.

"Why didn't Tony ever use them?" Lamia wondered, as they walked back along the corridors. "Surely he knew about them."

Meryl shrugged. "I don't know."

Lamia showed Meryl the viewport she'd discovered, and the two women sat there for a little while, staring out across the desert. It was oddly companionable. When Meryl turned to Lamia to speak, though, she found the girl curled up comfortably on the floor, ever-present rifle resting against her limp hand, asleep.

Meryl smiled slightly. "Just like a cat," she said softly, aloud, and then took a quick look around to make sure there weren't any actual cats in the room.

No cats.

"Now you're just being silly," Meryl told herself.

Leaving Lamia sleeping, she went down to check on Vash. He was also still asleep. Meryl sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingers itched to type, and she thought suddenly, My report!

How long had it been since she'd checked into the office? Goodness, it'd be a miracle if she still had a job. Meryl jumped to her feet, looking around frantically for her typewriter, and then she remembered where it was. In her luggage. In the car. In the middle of the desert.

"Shit," she said aloud, and sank back down onto the bed. She didn't even have hot water to make coffee. She looked down at her dusty, sweat-stained clothes -- whatever had happened to keeping her outfit neat and pressed, even in the middle of an investigation?

 _I've changed,_ Meryl thought. _I've changed more than I would have thought possible._

Her eyes drifted to Vash.

 _He's part of the reason. And Wolfwood, and Lamia, and even Knives. Somehow my life has drifted out of control... yet I don't feel the fear, the sense of loss, that I would have expected. What's happening to me?_

She sat down again, reflecting on the events of the past six years... and most particularly on the last few days. Her mind drifted to the chamber of bones, and to Wolfwood.

He couldn't possibly be down there... with those dead people... could he?

Meryl got up, cast a look at Vash to be sure that he was all right, and then left the medical bay.

The walk down into the bowels of the ship seemed shorter than she remembered, but maybe it was just because she was getting used to it. She picked her way among the bones, and soon she came upon the intact capsules with the dead family... and Wolfwood.

He was sitting in front of the row of intact capsules. Just sitting, his hands resting on his knees, staring up at them. He seemed entirely lost in some inner world.

Suddenly Meryl realized that it had been a mistake to come down here. If Wolfwood wanted companionship, he would have sought it. She wanted only to walk away without saying anything, but she took a step backwards and bumped into a pile of bones. She caught them before they fell over, but not before one clattered onto the floor.

Wolfwood looked around at her. He had a strange, dazed expression.

"Ah..." Meryl said. "It's a bit of a shock down here, isn't it? You should have seen my face --"

"They're my family," Wolfwood said.

Meryl couldn't speak. His eyes were strange, distant... dead.

"My family. My mom and dad, my brother and sister... my great grandmother... even that boy was my nephew."

He looked back up at the bodies.

"Um..." Meryl said. She wished she hadn't come down here. She could almost feel the tension radiating off this man like a flood of dark, cool water. Something in him was winding up tighter and tighter.

"I've been here before... to this ship, I mean... but I never came down here. Never even knew this existed."

"I, uh..." Meryl swallowed.

Wolfwood's eyes were distant and something dark and cold had come into his face. Suddenly Lamia was afraid of him.

"You didn't tell me about this," he asked quietly. "Did you know?"

"I..." Meryl hesitated, and looked away. "I knew they were here, if that's what you mean. I didn't know before... I mean, I..." She trailed off.

"Who did this?"

"There was a man..." Meryl said. Wolfwood's eyes fixed and held her. She wanted to back away; hell, she wanted to run.

"What man?"

"I don't know his name. He -- he had yellow eyes, he..." She stared at the floor. "It was the man you told us about. Tony. It had to have been."

"Tony," Wolfwood breathed. "The bastard with Legato's powers."

"He does have powers like that," Meryl said. "I felt it. He froze me in my tracks."

Wolfwood sank back against the capsule containing Lucas's body. He was white.

"So," he whispered. "It begins again. We never got to finish it the last time, Legato, like we should have. This isn't Vash's fight. It's mine."

 

* * *

 

Rem. Alex. Chapel. Wolfwood. Ellie.

Five generations of the family, inextricably entwined with Vash's own life. Just as his dream had said.

He drifted in a gray limbo, contemplating the strange intermingling between the fates of Rem... Tony... Nadia... Alex... Wolfwood... himself.

And someone else. Someone trying to talk to him in a soft blue light. He felt it reaching out to him, familiar yet strange, and shrank away, afraid to sink too deeply into unconsciousness, where the blue light waited for him.

Between life and death, he hovered, waiting. Not waiting for anything. Just waiting.

Voices came and went. He knew some of them, but he didn't want to think deeply enough to figure out whose voices they were. He remembered only enough to know that coming back to the real world meant pain, and he didn't want any more of that.

 _Pain. Loss. Your fault. Always your fault..._

"Time to wake up, Tongari."

No, Vash thought, withdrawing further into himself. That voice stirred faint memories, evoked emotions of friendship, affection -- and betrayal, loss.

 _If living means always hurting, then I don't want to live..._

"Come on, Tongari. Don't leave me alone with these women. Have some mercy."

Mercy...

 _I had mercy on my enemies, and people died because of it. My sins are too great to bear..._

"Besides, if you don't come back, the insurance girl will cry. You don't want that, do you?"

The insurance girl...

More memories. Good ones. Bad ones. Had he heard another voice among the ceaseless blur of voices while he slept...? A familiar voice...?

"And then she'll probably find some way of blaming me for it, and make my life miserable. Come on, Tongari. You can hear me. Open your eyes."

Vash did.

At first everything was blurry and gray, just like the world of his dreams. Then he started to resolve shapes. In his weakened state, he was hit with a powerful sense of deja vu. He thought he was five years old, lying in the medical bay of the Seeds ship. Then he woke up a little further, and realized that he _was_ in the medical bay of the ship. A ship.

"Welcome back, Tongari."

Vash turned his head to the side. Wolfwood was grinning at him.

"How long --" His voice was a hoarse whisper. He licked his lips and tried again. "How long have I been--?"

"About a day. Not too long." Wolfwood leaned forward. "How're you feeling?"

Vash blinked, raised his arm and found IV tubes dangling from it. "Been better."

Wolfwood chuckled.

"I thought I might have dreamed it..." Vash whispered. "You're really alive, huh?"

"Tough to kill. Like you, Tongari."

Vash sighed. "Still haven't got tired of calling me that, I see."

Wolfwood laughed. "You should see yourself. You're spikier than ever after spending the day in a hospital bed, needle-noggin."

Vash touched his shaggy hair, fingered it. On one side it was long enough to flop over, and on the other side, very short and spiky.

"I'd better go tell the girls you're awake. Meryl hasn't slept since we brought you here. I finally got her to go eat something, but she made me promise to watch you."

He got up, then hesitated, reached out awkwardly and touched Vash's arm. It wasn't much. Wolfwood wasn't a man who had any experience or ability at affectionate gestures. Slightly embarrassed, he withdrew his hand and tipped his sunglasses down over his eyes, hiding whatever might have been there.

"See you later, Tongari," he said, and left.

Vash grinned up at the ceiling.

Alone now, he stretched, testing out the limitations of his healing body. Everything was tender, but nothing hurt badly. He wasn't too surprised that the damage from the burns was already healing, though he could tell he would have more scars. His fast healing ability had saved his life more than once, but it did have its limits. And he wondered if without the technology on the ship, even his body would have been able to bounce back from the burns and dehydration.

The problems of being bound to a physical form, he mused. Was this why the Plants rejected physical bodies in favor of the light? Or was there another reason?

Suddenly Vash became aware that he was no longer alone. He turned his head slightly. Meryl stood in the doorway.

Vash's brief sense of peace fled. Meryl _was_ here. He hadn't dreamed it. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to see her or not.

She looked smaller than he remembered, or maybe it was just the room, because it was so huge. Even the doorway was big, eight or nine feet tall at least, easily tall enough to accommodate someone Vash's height and leave room to spare. Meryl looked like a child with all that space around her.

Like Millie, like Wolfwood, she was almost the same, but not quite. Like them, she had aged. Grown. Matured. Her hair was still short, and brushed limply against her cheeks, as if it hadn't been combed or washed in a while. She still wore a tan cape, either the same one or a similar one, though it was torn and stained from travel.

She wasn't tidy. That's what was different about her. Mussed hair, stained clothes, dark smudges like bruises under her eyes.

Vash knew then that he did want to see her -- he wanted to see her more than anything in the world. And he was also afraid. He knew she was going to yell at him, and he didn't think he could take that right now.

Meryl was looking around the room, anywhere but at Vash, and when she became aware of him looking at her, she jumped and made a show of studying the doorframe.

"Nice doors they have here," she said. "Yes. Very different from the ... doors back home. Very... doorlike."

"Do you want to come in and sit down?" Vash offered.

"Certainly," Meryl said primly. She came and perched on the edge of the bed next to Vash's, still looking at everything but him.

She certainly doesn't seem very pleased to see me, Vash thought. Well, I can hardly blame her. It's been six years. Maybe she expected me to write.

He couldn't help looking at her, since she was still looking away. Up close he could see that, as with Millie, the passing years had blossomed Meryl. The sharp, pointed face of the brash young woman he'd met had softened and firmed. A few fine lines had formed around her eyes, and Vash felt a sharp pain twist his heart. Age was the curse of the mortal ... but the curse of the immortal was worse: to watch everything you loved age, and finally die.

He didn't want to think about Meryl dying. Ever.

"What are you staring at, pointy head?" Meryl demanded.

"I was just noticing that you're getting a few wrinkles -- ow!" Another of Vash's curses was painful honesty. Literally painful, at times.

"Have you no sense?" Meryl snapped, pulling back her fist from bopping him on the head.

"Owww."

"I'm sorry," Meryl said, immediately contrite. "Did I hurt you?"

Vash paused in mid-snivel. Had Meryl just apologized?

"Not really," he said cautiously.

"Too bad," Meryl retorted, a shutter slamming down in her briefly worried eyes, and hit him again.

"Ow! Hey, if I said you're hurting me, would you stop?"

"Only if you stop insulting the way I look."

"I'd never insult the way you look, Meryl. I like the way you look."

"You do?" Meryl's voice faltered, then came back, stronger. "As if I care."

"I know, I know. You don't care what anyone thinks. That's fine. I like that about you, Meryl."

Meryl looked away, but he didn't feel the hard edge that he had when she'd walked into the room.

"Soooo. Where are we?"

"I'd think you'd know," Meryl said. "It is lost technology, after all. Don't you know about every piece of it on the planet?"

"This looks like a..." Vash waved his hand around at all the equipment. A ship, he'd started to say, but she probably didn't know that word...

"It's a ship," Meryl said, and Vash gave her a startled look. "A crashed ship. Lamia and I found it, along with..." She shook her head. "Lamia and I found it."

"Who's Lamia?"

"She's -- do you remember those little girls you and Wolfwood helped after the sand steamer crash? She's one of them. All grown up now."

"Wow," Vash murmured. "What's she like?"

"You'll ... have to meet her. She defies description."

"Lamia," Vash repeated.

"Yes. Look, you'll meet her. Nevermind about that. How are you?"

She asked how I am? To my face? Man, she really has changed, hasn't she?

"Better than I was."

"Do you need anything? Water?"

"Wolfwood brought me some."

"Oh. Good."

Meryl folded her hands in her lap and stared at them.

"I think I--"

"What are you-"

They started to speak at the same time. There was a brief, awkward moment of silence. Vash laughed. "You go ahead."

"I - I was just - going to mention -- my God, your hair!"

"My hair?" _Great, yet another crack about my spiky hair? I get plenty of that from Wolfwood..._

"It's grown back. Almost all of it. How is that possible?"

Vash half-grinned. "You have no idea how fast my hair grows. I have to cut it once a week, at least."

"But ... but it was all burned off. And your face..." She stared at it. "Looks like you're going to have a few more scars, but you're almost all healed. I can't believe it."

"I heal fast. I think it's my..." He trailed off.

"Species?"

"Whatever."

Awkwardness sat heavily between them. Vash noticed that the covers of the bed Meryl was sitting on were rumpled, as if someone had been spending a lot of time there lately.

 _Did you really stay with me, Meryl?_

"I was wondering --"

"So how did you --"

Once again they'd started talking at the same time. They fell silent again. Vash looked out of the corner of his eye at Meryl and saw that she was smiling.

"Your turn," Meryl said.

Vash shook his head. "I don't even know where to begin. I never thought I'd run into you out here."

Meryl laughed shortly. "I never would have expected to be here."

"What exactly _are_ you doing here, anyway?"

Meryl sighed. "I was kidnapped by a teenage hoodlum with a crush on your brother."

"A -- what? On my which?"

Meryl raised her hand. "Hold the questions until after the story."

So she told him what had been happening to her over the past few days. Vash listened in growing amazement.

"My brother..."

"Vash, I don't know how to explain it. He's ... changed. There's something different about him. And after talking to Wolfwood and hearing his story, I got to thinking... No, you'll laugh at me."

"I wouldn't laugh at you," Vash said quietly.

Meryl looked up. A brief smile flickered about her lips. "No... you wouldn't, would you? It's a feeling I got shortly after I met Knives again. Like something had gone out of him. Like ... I don't know how to explain this... like whatever made him Knives had left. That shadow. That badness. I wonder if maybe it... went into Sand?"

Vash blinked. "How do you know about Sand?"

Meryl gave him a glare. "Look, you may have been unconscious, but I've been awake. Wolfwood has filled me in on what's been happening to you two lately."

"Oh." Vash settled back on his pillows. "What you said... about Knives' evil going into Sand... That's almost in so many words what Sand told me. Knives, I mean. Only I hadn't reasoned out... what it really meant for Knives, then. It means he might actually be ... someone I could talk to. Someone I could care about."

"But he's with Tony now," Meryl said. "Knives... and Ellie." She clenched her fists. "I haven't told Wolfwood about Ellie and I told Lamia not to tell him. He's not in great shape either. The last thing we need is Wolfwood charging off into the hills to rescue her, and you know he will. If Tony doesn't get him, then he'll fall off a cliff and break his fool neck or something."

Vash blinked. "Uh... I told him."

"You what?"

"Told him," Vash said, wincing. "That he has a daughter."

"Not that, you spiky-haired moron, though that's bad enough. About Ellie being with Tony."

Vash froze. "Ellie's with -- oh, hold on. You just said that, didn't you?"

"You mean you weren't LISTENING?"

"I'm ... sort of listening." He'd actually been too busy thinking about Knives, trying to reason out the situation with Knives, to listen to the last part of her story.

"Oh, WHY do I bother?" Meryl stared up at the ceiling.

"Wait," Vash said. Now he was starting to think about her story, start to put it together. "You said you found a piece of the Genesis Machine --"

"Well, that's what Knives said it was."

"Tony has the other half," Vash said.

Meryl's hand flew to her mouth. "Are you sure?"

"I saw it," Vash said. "A white suitcase."

"That unfolds into a cross? Like Wolfwood's, only double barreled?"

"I don't know. I never saw it do that."

Meryl got up and began pacing frantically. "Now we _have_ to keep the part we have away from him!"

"It doesn't make sense, though." Vash raised himself to a sitting position in bed, watching her pace. "I could see _Tony_ wanting to get hold of the Genesis Machine... Tony Blanchard, that is, the Seeds ship captain. But if Tony is Legato, or if he's working for Knives -- it doesn't make sense at all. The Genesis Machine only kills Plants. Its purpose is to create a paradise for humans. There's no way Knives would want something like that, unless he wanted to destroy it, and he'd need the cooperation of a Plant who was willing to die. He'd never do that."

"You seem very sure that your brother means no harm to the Plants."

"Of course not! Look, Knives is a psychopath, but only towards humans. All that he's done, he's done for the good of our kind."

"The good of your kind," Meryl repeated. "Look, how do you know that? Nothing you've told me has given me any indication of that." She began to tick off on her fingers. "He caused the crash of the ships, right? That could have killed all the Plants! If it had happened the way he wanted, then he would have committed genocide on his entire people."

"Shit," Vash muttered, staring at his hands, clasped in his lap. "I never thought about that. But he's been so ... so committed to..."

"To what? Killing humanity, all right. To protect the Plants, he says. What has he ever done for the Plants? From what Wolfwood has told me, he experimented on them to create a new body for himself, killing many in the process. If he feels the Plants are so oppressed by humanity, why hasn't he tried to free any of them? All he did was sit out in the desert, plotting the downfall of humankind. He's obsessed, he's crazy, and he doesn't care about the Plants any more than he does about humans."

"You don't know him," Vash said softly. "I've known him longer than you've been alive, Meryl."

Meryl spun on him, her cape swirling about her, eyes hot with anger.

"Stop reminding me! This entire conversation -- it's been 'Plants' this, 'I'm a zillion years old' that. Stop making me think about you being different from me!"

"I am different, Meryl."

"I don't care!" Meryl screamed.

There was a brief pause. They stared at each other. Meryl's chest rose and fell with short gasps for air.

Suddenly Vash realized, a good deal too late, that he was naked from the waist up. "Uh..." He reached for the sheet.

"Oh stop it," Meryl snapped. "I've seen it all before, okay? Every damned scar. Stop hiding who you are from me!"

"I'm sorry, Meryl. I don't understand why you -- I mean, what did I do to piss you off this time, anyway?"

"You are so infuriating!" Meryl turned her head away, biting her lips, and Vash saw, in absolute shock, that her eyes were brimming over with tears. "Don't you even -- doesn't it even matter --"

"Of course. Of course it does." He was babbling, not even sure what he was saying, just wanting her to stop crying. "Meryl. Meryl, please don't cry."

He stood up without thinking about it, trailing IV wires and a sheet half wrapped around him like a mummy's shroud; swayed through a wave of dizziness, then felt better, and put an arm around her shoulders.

Meryl shivered, then, reluctantly, leaned against him.

It felt very... right. Vash remembered how she'd reminded him of Rem before, but just at this moment, she didn't remind him of Rem at all. Her body was a tiny warm lump against him. She was so small. He could crush her with one hand.

He could crush her heart, he realized, with less than that.

Vash laid his head on top of hers, his cheek against her soft hair. Meryl shivered.

"Vash..."

"Shhh."

He didn't want to say anything. Didn't want words to shatter this. Their entire relationship up until now had been based, it seemed, on fighting, on hurting each other. Now the two of them were suspended somehow in time, between one harsh word and the next. He wanted the moment to stretch out as long as it could.

But nothing lasts forever, Vash knew. Meryl gave him a little push, not hard, just enough to indicate that she wanted to get herself back together, and he withdrew his arm from her shoulders.

"Put some clothes on, buddy," she muttered, looking away.

Vash snugged the sheet more tightly around his hips, blushing right to the roots of his shaggy, regrown hair. "I don't have any. They burned up."

He started wandering around the medical bay, towing the IV stand. Meryl followed, curious.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"Food synthesizer. Aren't you hungry?"

"I am hungry, but... what's a food syth -- sythensizer?"

"Synthesizer. It's how people used to eat on the ships. Aha, here's one." Vash touched the buttons lightly. "Hmm, the ship's galley's been powered down. I'll have to warm it up. As long as there's no damage, though, it should be fine. The raw materials for the food are just syn-proteins and starches. They keep forever."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Meryl sighed. "But that's just usual, isn't it."

"Look, as soon as it warms up, I'll show you how to work it. There's thousands of pre-programmed meals... drinks..."

"Coffee?" Meryl asked hopefully.

"Sure. Hundreds of flavors."

"Hundreds of flavors of COFFEE?"

"Wait until you taste espresso." Then he eyed her for a moment, and muttered, "Uh, maybe we'd better leave that one alone."

"So how long is it going to take that thing to warm up? I'm hungry now."

"A little while," Vash said. "We could find some clothes for me -- bound to be something in one of the lockers -- and then go look for the others."

Meryl smiled. "Sure. Uh... will you be okay walking around?"

"I think so. I'm just a little unsteady... could use some support..."

Meryl slipped an arm around his waist. "Is this better?"

"Much."

 

* * *

 

Wolfwood and Lamia were eating beside a low fire when Meryl and a limping Vash approached them.

"Nice to see you up and about, Tongari," Wolfwood said, raising an eyebrow. "You do heal fast, don't you? My God, your skin's mostly grown back, even."

"With a little help from lost technology," Vash said. He sat down stiffly by the fire. "You bunch shouldn't be out here. It isn't safe."

"Nowhere to make a fire inside," Lamia said through a mouthful. "Ain't gonna eat my food cold."

"You don't have to," Vash said. "There are machines on the ship that can make food for us. I'm warming one up."

"Really?" Lamia said eagerly. "Damn, I wish we'd known about those days ago!" She stuck out a slightly greasy hand. "Mister Vash. I still dunno if it's really you, but it's good to meet you at last."

Vash shook her hand.

"Uh, Tongari," Wolfwood said. "What the heck are you wearing?"

Vash looked down at himself. The only clothing of any kind he and Meryl been able to find were some Seeds survival suits, of the sort Vash and Knives had been wearing when they crashed in the desert. However, the suits were too tight-fitting for Vash to wear on his still-healing torso. So they'd cut one of the suits off at the waist, and then rigged a sort of toga to cover his torso from one of the sheets.

The general effect was not something that was going to be walking down a fashion runway anytime soon, particularly in combination with Vash's patchwork of scars, healing burns, and wilder-than-usual hair.

"What do you mean?" Vash said, looking blank.

"Look, let's get inside the ship," Meryl said. "I don't like being out here."

They extinguished the fire and retreated inside. Vash led the way back to the medical bay, where the food processors had warmed up and Vash treated the group to Earth cuisine: hamburgers and donuts. While they ate, they talked -- going over the details of the stories they hadn't quite shared.

"...and then that guy, Tony I guess his name is -- vanished into the hills with Ellie and ... Knives," Lamia said.

Wolfwood went pale. "With Ellie?"

"Well, yeah. Hey --!"

Wolfwood launched himself at Lamia. Meryl caught him and held him back. He turned on her.

"Why didn't you -- how could you --"

"Calm down!" Meryl said. "I thought you'd do something stupid if you found out."

"Oh... wait," Lamia said, puzzling it out. "You'd be... oh. Sorry. I forgot."

"That creep has my daughter!"

"Settle down," Vash said. Wolfwood whirled on him.

"And YOU! I feel like it's one giant conspiracy! Let's keep Wolfwood in the dark about everything --"

He said more, but Vash didn't hear it. Suddenly he had a splitting headache. He slumped, raising his hand to his head. Meryl said his name with concern, but Vash was only aware of another voice, speaking inside his brain. If it could even be called a voice. It spoke directly to the depths of his mind. It was frightened. It cried out.

"What's wrong?" Lamia was saying, and Meryl had her hand on his shoulder.

"The Plant..." Vash said. "It's afraid. It says someone is approaching."

"Oh, great," Meryl muttered.

"Hope it's Tony," Wolfwood muttered, smacking his fist into his palm.

Lamia led the way to the observation deck. The four of them walked out to the edge of the observation area, and looked down across the panorama of desert. None of them paid the slightest attention to a small black cat weaving in and out among their ankles; slightly put out, the cat went and curled up in a corner with an annoyed "Mya."

"I see someone out there!" Lamia cried.

Vash squinted. "Three people. Oh, wow, I think that's..."

"Oh my god." Wolfwood shrank behind Vash. "Hide me."

"...Millie," Vash finished. "What? Why?"

"Look," Wolfwood said. "If you hit me, and she" (looking at Lamia) "shot me, God knows what SHE'LL do to me." He hesitated. "It's really Millie?"

"What in the world is she doing out here?" Meryl said.

"Are you sure?" Wolfwood said from behind Vash.

"Yes," Vash snapped, nettled. "Stop using me for a stungun shield. She can't even see us."

"I can see her now," Meryl said. "Yes, it is! And she's got Ellie with her!"

"And another woman," Lamia said.

"Angie," Wolfwood said, coming reluctantly out from behind Vash. "That's Angie! She's alive!" _And Ellie..._

"Look behind them," Lamia said quietly.

The others followed her pointing finger, from the small group of figures toiling across the desert floor, up and up, to three small figures silhouetted against the top of the cliff behind them.

 

* * *

 

The small group on top of the cliff stood looking down at the ship. Knives was held by no tangible bond to the others, but he was hunched, holding his arm, where the blood on his sleeve had dried dark and flaky.

Sand was holding the stump of her arm against her side. Her face was drawn with pain, but the eyes were bright, intense.

"Legato, can you stop them?"

Tony shook his head. "They're too far away."

Of all three of them, wounded though they were, he looked perhaps the worst -- as if only willpower kept him from collapsing. Sand seemed unconcerned.

"It doesn't matter, then. We'll get them all together. They have no hope of keeping us out... and they're all together."

"Just the two of you," Knives said.

Sand looked at him quietly. "And you ... fragile shell that I used to wear. And you."


	25. Rain of Light

Knives had thought he was dead, and he'd welcomed it, when the concussion from the last exploding shell knocked him and Tony over the lip of the cliff. They tumbled downwards in an awkward, obscene embrace, the wind screaming past their ears, and Knives shut his eyes to block out the sights he didn't want to see -- the rocks growing closer and closer, and Tony's yellow eyes staring at him -- and focused on the few good memories that he had of the short life he'd been able to experience: Lamia hugging him, Ellie putting her little hand in his, even Meryl's grudging acceptance. Eyes still shut, he sent them a silent, sad farewell.

Suddenly they stopped falling with a bone-jarring, but nonfatal, shock. Knives opened his eyes to discover that they were both floating about a hundred feet above the rocks. Tony dropped them to the ground in a series of short falls. When their feet touched the ground, he sank immediately to his knees, breathing heavily.

In spite of himself, Knives felt moved by compassion, but he reminded himself of the corpses in the ship, the neatly stacked bones. A single gunshot from above shocked him out of his contemplation, reminding him of Ellie and the other woman, Angie. Knives ran back to the cliff, but he could see immediately that he couldn't possibly climb it.

A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned just in time to see Sand appear out of thin air. It seemed that colored light, laced with blue, flowed together and wove about to create her thin form.

She was covered with blood, but she raised her head and glared at Knives from her fierce blue eyes, then whirled on Tony. "Why is this still alive?"

Tony flattened himself on the ground. "I cannot kill him, Master! I can't do it. I don't know why..."

"I do," Sand said. "It's because he looks like I once did. Your conditioning is too deep, Legato. Well..." She approached Knives. She was clearly injured; blood dripped off her cloak, and she was hunched over as if in pain. He couldn't tell where she'd been hurt, however. She had both arms drawn under her cloak. "Maybe he can be useful to us after all."

She spun back to Tony. "Legato! Lift us to the top of the cliff."

Tony raised his head, and for the first time Knives saw emotion on his face -- abject terror. "I cannot. It was all I could do to break our fall, Master..."

Sand approached him. She took a blood-covered hand from under her cloak and touched his face; he shivered, whether with fear or ecstasy Knives couldn't tell.

 _I see. You do not appear to have slept in some time.Will you be better once you have slept?_

Knives jumped. He could hear their voices inside his head, and realized with shock that some of what he had assumed was the Plants communicating with each other had actually been the distant murmur of these two, speaking to each other across great distances.

 _Yes, Master._ When Tony spoke to Sand, Knives could get glimpses of his emotions and thoughts as well. It was terrifying, like a ragged blade of insanity sawing at his own mind.

 _Then we'll rest here before we continue. It's not as if there's anywhere they can go._

Sand's thoughts were different, inscrutable and cold and blue, and terrifyingly familiar.

 _Yes, Master._ This time there was something new in Tony's fractured thoughts -- confusion, surprise? It was quickly hidden, but Knives reached after it, trying to understand, and realized that Tony hadn't expected compassion from Sand. He had expected to be punished for his weakness.

Maybe she isn't what he thinks she is, either, Knives thought.

Sand turned and gave him a slow, calculating look. _You can hear us, can't you?_

Knives tried to look blank.

Sand waved her hand, and spoke aloud. "Are any of your traveling caches near here, Tony?"

"There's one an hour's walk or so away."

"Good. We'll go there first. There should be food, water, medical supplies." Suddenly Sand pivoted on her heel. "Tony, where is the Genesis Machine?"

"With me," Tony said, showing her the white suitcase. He hadn't let go of it, even during the fall. Knives suspected that he would have hung onto it even if the extra weight had meant they would both plunge to their deaths.

"Good," Sand said. "Come. We'll eat, refresh these bodies, and then... we have work to do."

 

* * *

 

Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Lamia met Millie, Angie and Ellie at the doors of the ship.

Wolfwood hung back nervously behind Vash, particularly after noticing that Millie's trademark stungun had been replaced by a shotgun.

Angie saw the little group at the doors first, and she started waving wildly. Millie turned to her in shock, then looked forward, and for a moment her tired brain refused to acknowledge what she was seeing.

 _Vash... and Meryl... I must be going insane!_

But it was. The two groups met on the sand in front of the doors, everyone talking wildly.

"But I thought you were--"

"How did you find--"

"I'm so glad to see you weren't--"

"How is--"

"Where is--"

"Who is--"

Amidst the general cacophony of voices, Wolfwood was silent, staying behind the others, craning for a glimpse of the girl he'd left behind, and the child that everyone said was his.

So that was Ellie. Wow. Adorable kid, with her mother's huge eyes, and his wild black hair... in the shock of the moment, his glazed eyes passed over the stubborn set to her chin and the obstinate way that her little feet were planted on the ground.

And Millie... Wolfwood was staggered by her beauty.

She'd been cute before, but now she was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Time had mellowed and matured her, filling out the promise that he had seen years ago.

He became aware that he was staring with his mouth open, and shut it. A second later, he became aware, as well, that she was staring at him.

The voices of the others faded to an indistinct murmur. The two of them might as well have been in a world that belonged only to them -- and included the child clinging to Millie's hand and staring nervously at Wolfwood.

"Mr. Priest..." Millie whispered.

He couldn't move. He only wanted her to not be angry at him, please God, he'd never ask for anything else, if only she wasn't angry at him --

The next thing he knew, her arms were around him, almost lifting him off his feet with the casual strength she wasn't aware she possessed.

"It can't be you," she mumbled. "It can't be. It can't be." She pushed him away, and stared at him. Tears brimmed in her blue eyes. "Is it you?"

"It's me," Wolfwood affirmed.

"You're alive."

"I'm alive."

Millie's jaw started to come forward with a look Wolfwood -- heart sinking -- recognized all too well. It was the look she got whenever someone came between her and pudding. It was a look that was generally followed by a lot of breaking glass and screaming.

"And just where exactly--" she began.

But Ellie interrupted, yanking her hand free of her mother's. "Mommie!" she cried, hiding behind Millie. "It's _that man!_ He's scary!"

Wolfwood stared at Ellie, and all of a sudden, something clicked in his head.

"Hey," he said. "I've seen this kid before." He went down to one knee. "Hey... Ellie, is it? Do you remember me? Were you in March City? I gave you a candy bar in March City. Remember?"

The child hesitated, and Wolfwood thought, _Oh my God, it WAS her. I was that close to my daughter, and I never knew, I never even knew --_

Millie spoke, and her voice sounded like she was fighting for self-control. "She's -- she's your --"

"I know," Wolfwood said, looking up at her.

Ellie burst into tears and tried to kick him. "I don't like you! You're scary!"

"What are you talking about? I gave you a candy bar, brat," Wolfwood said before he could stop himself, then quailed from Millie's glare.

"She's your kid, all right," Meryl said behind him.

Wolfwood looked up at her. "She seems to be a bit shy."

"That's one word for it," Meryl muttered.

"Meryl..." Millie reached out and put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Meryl, thank you for taking care of my daughter. Thank you..."

Meryl shrugged and blushed, not sure what to say.

"Guys," Lamia said. "Hey, guys!" She pointed at the clifftop, where they'd watched, from inside the ship, the trio of figures stand unmoving as Millie, Angie and Ellie had drawn ever closer to them over the sands.

The clifftop was empty now.

"We'd better go in," Lamia murmured.

They did. The door shuddered closed behind them.

"But that won't keep them out," Meryl said. "They can just open it."

"I thought before..." Lamia said, and everyone looked at her. "If we broke the opener, then no one would be able to get in. But someone would have to stay outside to do that."

There was a brief silence, then Meryl grinned.

"Not someone," she said. "Something."

She turned to Vash and explained quickly about the defensive machinery that she and Lamia had discovered on the ship. "Can you control them?"

"The Plant does that," Vash said. "But I can explain to her what we need."

Wolfwood clapped his hands together. "Okay, people! We have a plan! We're not going to sit here like sardines in a can--"

"Who put you in charge?" Lamia snapped at him. "I'm the one who found those machines!"

"--hell no, we're gonna fight!" Wolfwood charged ahead, ignoring her. "We need weapons! Lots of weapons! Vash, you go see if the Plant can help us. Meryl--"

"Lamia's right," Meryl said, arms crossed. "Who _did_ put you in charge?"

"Somebody's gotta be," Wolfwood retorted.

"Yeah, but who said it has to be you?"

Angie broke in. "I don't know if anyone has thought about this, but while we're arguing, there's no telling where Tony and the others are--"

Galvanized by her words, the group split up immediately. Vash went up to the Plant chamber, and Wolfwood headed for the observation chamber to see if he could spot their enemies, with Millie and Ellie on his heels. Angie said that she knew how to do simple programming on the defensive machines, and so she went off towards the chamber full of them, with a nervous Lamia to show her the way.

Meryl was left, all alone, by the door. She rested a hand lightly against its cool metal surface.

In a few minutes, we'll be trapped in here, she thought. And they'll be out there. What then?

And what about Knives?

 

* * *

 

"What a lovely view!" Millie cried, leaning against the plastic enclosure of the observation chamber.

Wolfwood grinned. In a lot of ways she hadn't changed... all the ways that counted, really.

"Do you see anyone out there?" he asked, coming up beside her. Their shoulders were almost touching, and he could smell the soft scent of her hair. How could anyone who'd been in the desert for a week smell that good?

Millie shook her head, flinging light strands of hair that brushed against his cheek. On accident, he assumed... but maybe not.

She turned to look at him with her big blue eyes, and once again, he found himself struck by how beautiful she had become.

"I went back to the church, you know," she said.

"..Huh?"

"Every year, on the anniversary of your... death. I lit a candle for you, and every time, I knelt on the floor and tried to reach out to you, hoping that you were still watching over me. But I never felt anything. And then, each time, I tried to say goodbye... but I never felt a sense of closure. I felt as if I could put it all behind me if I could just find the right thing to do. But I never found what that right thing was. Going to the church didn't help. Staying away didn't help. And every time I'd look at Ellie and see her daddy in her eyes --" She broke off with a little gasp of pain.

"Don't have a daddy," Ellie said sullenly. She was sitting on the floor and refused to come near them.

"How could you?" Millie whispered. "How could you... why didn't you call, or write, or something? How could you let us think you were dead?"

"Look, don't -- please don't cry. Sit down." He took her arm and helped her to the floor.

Millie shrugged off his hand, and dashed angrily at her eyes. "Please explain it to me... in some way that makes sense. Please?"

"I wish I could," Wolfwood said. "I wish I could explain it to myself."

"How did you survive?" Millie asked.

"Angie. She found me in the church, that day when I was shot. Angie and I... go way back. She took me out here, to this ship, and used the equipment to save my life. But then she disappeared... I later learned that she'd left with Tony, but at the time, I thought she'd been killed by Chapel. I didn't know yet that he was dead."

"Chapel... the man you went to fight."

"Yes. Legato killed him, but I didn't know that. I left the ship before I was really ready, and tried to walk out of the desert. I'd be dead if I hadn't been found."

Millie laughed softly to herself. "Like that time we found you... when we first met. Do you make a habit of going for walks in the desert without water, preacher man?"

"Hey! I'd've taken water if I'd've had water, insurance girl."

Millie looked away. "I'm not an insurance girl. Not any more. I quit working for Bernardelli after Ellie was born."

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't know."

She laughed. "Don't be sorry. I don't miss it. Anyway... what happened to you then?"

He almost preferred being punched in the face by Vash. At least that way, he'd known what Vash felt. She was taking this _much_ too well.

"I was sick for a long time after I got out of the desert," he said. "When I was strong enough to travel, I went back... looking for the rest of you. And I found out from the news reports, and from talking to people, about the fights that had taken place, the bodies that were found. Parts of it were almost incoherent, but I pieced together what had happened. Legato was dead. Knives was dead or gone. The fight that I should have fought beside the rest of you was over, done, with no help from me."

He looked down at his hands. "I was so ashamed, Millie! I kept thinking... if I'd been stronger... if I'd done things differently... I wanted so much to see all of you again, but then I'd talk myself out of it. I'd remind myself that you all thought I was dead, and that you probably wouldn't be very happy to have me show up in your lives again. I figured that you'd moved on, that you'd all moved on. And the more time that went by, the more I'd built it up into this great barrier in my head, until I was going out of my way to avoid the slightest chance of running into any of you. I tried to put together a new life for myself, but I couldn't hold onto anything. Everything that I tried to build fell apart, crumbled like sand. I couldn't keep a job. I'd try to buy a house or a car and then lose it somehow." He grinned faintly. "Like my last motorcycle... as far as I know, it's still parked outside a hotel in November City. Unless someone's walked off with it."

Millie's hand moved to cover his. Her fingers were warm and smooth.

"You didn't have to be afraid," she said.

He laughed softly. "I know that now. I wish I'd believed it at the time."

Millie's hand closed over his, squeezing gently.

"So how do you know Angie?" she said at last.

"She saved my life when I was a kid. After my parents were... killed." He shuddered slightly; Millie gave him a curious look, but he wasn't ready to talk about the carefully preserved bodies, not yet. "She took me to my uncle Chapel. They raised me... most of the time. At one point Angie dropped me off at an orphanage. She knew what my uncle was like, a long time before I'd figured it out. I was happy at the orphanage -- in retrospect, one of the few times in my life I've really been happy -- but I left to find my uncle. I didn't think the family should be split up. I wish I hadn't."

He stared at the floor, lost in those long-ago memories of pain and betrayal. Millie's hand moved slowly across his... soothing him.

"After I left Uncle Chapel, I went back to the orphanage to find that it had run out of money and been abandoned. The wind was blowing sand through cracks in the walls where I remembered children running and playing... so I decided to fix it up, and give the children a place to come once again. I decided that I'd finally found something worthwhile to do with the skills Uncle Chapel had taught me. He'd taught me to be a killer, and so I'd kill -- but only to protect the kids. I hunted bounties to make money to keep the orphanage going. They didn't know, of course. They called me Big Brother Nick."

He looked up at Millie. "I've never talked to anyone about this."

She squeezed his hand, encouraging.

"Man am I glad you guys are up here!"

Millie and Wolfwood both jumped and withdrew their hands with a guilty start as Lamia charged into the room. She was pale and shaking.

"What's wrong?" Millie said. "Are you all right?"

"They've brought out... them," Lamia said, with a shudder.

"They?" Wolfwood said in a disinterested tone, glaring at the girl and hoping that she'd take the hint. She didn't.

"Them?" Millie added.

"Vash," Lamia said, pronouncing the syllable carefully as if to distinguish it from "her" Vash, "... and Angie. They've woke up those machines."

 

* * *

 

Under the direction of Vash, with the cooperation of the Plant and a little help from Angie, the ship's defensive machinery was moved from the cargo bay out into the open desert.

The doors to the bay were sealed by tons of rock, so they had to take the machines down the corridor. The things looked like balled-up spiders, with their massive steel limbs hunched almost double to fit down the narrow corridors. But they did as they were directed, hitching their way forward until they were outside and could expand to their full height.

Meryl had wholeheartedly believed that such a thing was possible, but it still gave her a little thrill of mingled fear and wonder to see the whole line of them marching obediently down the corridor and out into the sunshine. Fear because she remembered all too strongly what it felt like to stare into the blinking red eye of such machines -- and wonder, that humans could devise such a thing, and make it obey them.

Lamia had vanished. Meryl didn't blame her, since the girl had such bad memories of the creatures' attack.

Angie went running off; she said she had something important to do, but didn't elaborate. Vash and Meryl were left alone at the door.

"Well," Meryl said, brushing her hands on her hips. "It's time to shut it."

Vash nodded. "Good luck, all of you."

Meryl's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'all of you'? Where are you going to be?"

He gestured. His hand was still slightly shaky, and she wondered at the reserves of strength that kept him going when he should be resting. Should be in a coma, for that matter.

His hand pointed out. Into the desert.

"Out there," he said.

Meryl stared. "You can't be serious!"

Vash nodded.

"You're planning to seal yourself out? But... why?"

"My brother is out there," Vash said simply.

Meryl's heart constricted, thinking of Knives.... the man she'd come to view as a friend. But she forced the feeling down inside. "Vash... Tony is out there. Tony and a version of Knives who doesn't care if he hurts you. Don't go. It's suicide."

Vash smiled... that sweet smile that reached straight down into the soft core of herself, the part she'd thought she bricked up years ago. "I can't die. I'm the Humanoid Typhoon, remember?"

Meryl gritted her teeth. "Aren't you -- aren't you going to say... goodbye to everyone?"

He shook his head, looking sad. "I think I've said everything I need to say."

 _To me? Even to me, Vash?_

You never said...

Meryl choked off that thought.

Vash suddenly slapped at his sides, reaching for pockets that were no longer there. "My coat! What happened to my coat?"

"It was utterly destroyed," Meryl said, shaking herself back to reality. "Just rags."

"Was anything left?" He looked oddly distraught.

"Does it matter? It's just a coat. You didn't have any sentimental attachment to it, did you?"

"Well, a little bit... but it's not that. There was something in the pocket that I need. I'd completely forgotten about it until right now... so much has happened." He drooped. "It was probably destroyed along with the coat."

"You mean this?" Meryl reached into her pocket and took out a crumpled, soot-stained envelope. "I found this in one of the pockets when I... tookitoffyou," she mumbled, blushing.

But Vash didn't notice; he was staring at the envelope. The words NICHOLAS WOLFWOOD were barely visible, almost obscured by soot. "Yes! That's it! It's for Wolfwood, from the orphanage kids. Make sure that he gets it, okay?"

Meryl thrust the envelope roughly at him. "You do it! I'm not your errand girl!"

Vash shook his head, and gently pushed the envelope back to her. "You'd better. I want to make sure it gets there."

Meryl looked up at him, and his words slowly sank in.

"You ARE coming back from this," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Don't go out there if you don't think you'll come back."

"I have to. It's my brother out there."

"I don't care!" Meryl's voice rose almost to a scream. "It's YOU in here! I waited six years to see you again! I thought you were going to die in the desert, and now you're up and walking around, and just like that you're going to walk back out there and maybe I'll never see you again -- damn you!"

"I have to," Vash repeated quietly. "I don't ask you to understand. The machines will protect you, all of you, as long as they can. Hopefully you won't have to fight." He smiled faintly. "But you can handle yourself in a fight, right?"

He turned and walked towards the open door.

"Vash! Stop!"

He kept walking.

"Vash..." Meryl had never, in her life, begged anybody for anything. Something inside her bent, broke and snapped. "Vash. Please. Please stop."

His head bowed, but he kept walking. He reached the door. He stepped over the sill, and reached for the control panel to close it.

"Vash!" Meryl screamed. Her voice was lost in the slamming of the door. She ran towards it just as she heard a sizzling crackle from the other side. At first she thought it was Legato, that he'd been waiting there all along -- but as she ran up to the door, slammed her fist against it, she realized what that sound had been: the lasers of the machines.

The door was sealed shut.

They were locked in... and Vash was locked out.

Meryl bashed her fist against the door, crumpling the letter into a wad of dirty paper. "No! No! Damn you! Don't do this again! Don't walk away again! Vash..."

She fell to her knees on the floor, and, pressing her face against the cold metal, whispered brokenly, "I hate you. I hate you, Vash."

But that wasn't what she wanted to say. Not at all.

"I love you," her rebellious lips whispered, feeling the metal cold and gritty against them.

But Vash was too far away to hear.

 

* * *

 

Vash didn't look back. He plodded onward, ever onward, over the sands.

He was weak and shaky, thirsty and tired, but not in any danger of collapsing. A human in his situation would probably have fallen down ages ago, or at least would be so tormented by pain and exhaustion that they wouldn't be good for much.

But Vash... as he so often reminded himself ... wasn't human. And sometimes he was glad. Sometimes it helped him protect those he loved.

He weakened enough to cast a glance over his shoulder, at the dusty hulk of the Seeds vessel. Wolfwood, Meryl, Millie, Angie, Ellie, even Lamia. His friends. His family.

Fiercely he blinked back the hot tears springing into his eyes.

The machines trundled behind him, obedient even unto death.

He was aware of the soft, cool presence of the ship's Plant, somewhere beneath his consciousness. She had not turned away from him, as the others had. He didn't know why. He hadn't had time to talk to her -- to learn why the Plants were angry and unhappy, why they seemed to hate him. Maybe, if he died, all things would be revealed.

Maybe he would just go into darkness, never knowing.

He looked up and saw three small figures shimmering with heat, far away.

Vash walked towards them.

They met under the sweltering sun, iles from shelter. Vash stared at the trio -- he'd thought he was weak and sick, but they looked worse. Sand's body was a skinny caricature of a human being, with hot, staring eyes that never blinked. Tony looked like a man who'd been beaten by thugs and then left for a few days beneath the desert sun; however, his stance was tense, rested, and Vash knew he was still something to fear -- as was the white metal case he carried in his hand.

Vash's eyes were drawn beyond these two, however, to the tall blond figure who followed them. Knives -- the former Knives -- raised his pale head and fastened his eyes upon Vash. And, to Vash's utter amazement, he smiled. The smile was warm and natural.

"You must be Vash," he said. "I've heard about you."

"I.." Vash couldn't breathe. It was Knives. And yet... it wasn't. Knives had never had that softness in his eyes. That light in his face.

Looking into Knives' face had always been like looking into a mirror, but a dark mirror, a broken mirror. Now, the reflection was true. They were twins. They had always been twins.

Vash wanted to weep, but now was not the time.

"You have something we need," Sand said, her voice a harsh rasp.

Vash looked at her, seeing the ravages that heat and dehydration had taken upon her slender frame. "You are killing that body," he said simply.

Sand raised a shaking hand and pointed at the ship, its form almost lost through heat-shimmers. "In that vessel is everything I need to heal my body. You'll help us get in, won't you?"

Vash shook his head. "I've sealed the door. We can't get in, and won't. We're stuck out here."

Sand's eyes narrowed. "Sealed the door? You think that will keep us out? Oh, Vash. What a fool you are. We are not creatures of time and space unless we choose to be, don't you know that?"

She turned to Knives. "Legato. The case. I need it."

Tony wordlessly passed her the white metal case. She staggered with its weight, then turned back to Vash, and held out one skeletal hand.

"Let me show you, brother," she said. "Let me show you all we can be, we creatures of both flesh and light."

Vash hesitated, so she seized his hand herself. Her grip was hard, bony and painful.

"You get in your way, Legato," she said. "I'll meet you inside."

"Yes, Lord," Vash heard Tony say.

Then the world around Vash dissolved into blue light. He heard the Plant's voice in his head, terrified, screaming without words. He was almost too panicked to think -- the feeling was so like the Angel Arm, but without the utter loss of control. He was still himself. He clung to that feeling, that assurance, and felt the panic begin to ebb and come under control.

The light around them faded, and Sand released his hand. Vash looked around, blinking blue spots out of his vision. He was so disoriented that he had to piece together details until he realized where they were: the Plant chamber on the ship.

He looked forward and there was Angie, kneeling beneath the Plant's glass bubble. In front of her was the great cross-shape -- one half of the Genesis Machine.

And Sand had the other.

Sand smiled.

 

* * *

 

From the observation lounge, Wolfwood, Millie and Lamia watched Tony engage in battle with the machines.

Sand and Vash winked out in a blaze of rainbow light -- and while the observers were still blinking the streaks from their vision and trying to decide if they'd actually seen what they thought they'd seen, the machines attacked.

A heated battle followed, but slowly Tony's small, determined figure drew nearer and nearer to the ship. Sometimes he used Knives for a shield; more often, Knives trailed along behind. One machine after another was twisted and pulped into an unrecognizable steel sculpture.

After a while, one thing became abundantly clear.

"Tongariiiiiii...." Wolfwood moaned, banging his head against the glass enclosing the observation area.

"What?" Millie asked, curious and slightly concerned.

Wolfwood gave her a weary look. "That idiot programmed them not to kill anybody. Including Tony."

"Oh," Millie said, and thought about it. "That sounds like something Vash would do."

"Dammit Tongari!" Wolfwood railed at the sky. "I've already died once! I don't intend to repeat that experience! I'll kill you!"

"Thought you were a pacifist," Lamia said.

Wolfwood glared at her. "There's a fine line, though. And I think we're about to cross it. Even a pacifist condones the use of force to defend life and--" He glanced at Ellie, curled up on Millie's lap. "Family," he finished.

"Good," Lamia said. She slammed a fist into her palm. "I can't wait to kick that little jerk's butt!"

 

* * *

 

The last of the machines sank to the sand in a crumpled heap of metal, and Tony stood triumphantly in front of the sealed doors of the ship. He looked back at Knives, trailing behind him. Knives' injured arm hung at his side, crusty with dried blood.

"I may not be able to kill you, false master," Tony said. "But you will have the pleasure of watching the human race die at our master's hands, and that gives me some consolation."

Knives smiled slightly. He couldn't explain why the despair that had settled upon him, ever since he'd been Tony's prisoner, had suddenly lifted. One look into Vash's blue-green eyes had done it. There was a shadow of sadness on those eyes -- but also a conviction that there was good in the world, and that goodness was nothing more than treating others as you would wish to be treated, and trying to live each day as the best possible person that you can be. It wasn't high ideals, it wasn't religion, it was nothing more than that simple concept -- and along with that went the absolute conviction that goodness would win, it had to, there was no alternative.

Knives had seen all that in Vash's eyes in that one glance. And though he didn't believe all of it, he still felt buoyed by it, and for the first time his pain was eased slightly by the hope that everything might work out somehow.

"Your master doesn't seem to be able to kill me either," he said.

He wasn't sure why he said it, or where he'd gotten that impression, but he was quite sure of it. He could see such a strange mix of emotions in the blond girl's eyes whenever she looked at him -- hate, fear, and an eerie wonder. He thought that she would destroy him if it was within her power to do so.

Tony gave him a level look of pure hate. "Our Master is perfect. He does nothing that he does not intend."

"You're only saying that because you have a computer chip in your head that's telling you to say it," Knives said -- once again, not sure quite how he knew that, but positive that it was true.

He thought for a moment how tired he was of his mind having parties without inviting the rest of him along. How nice it would be to wake up and discover that the last few weeks of amnesia and misery had all been a dream, and he was actually a father of four in a nice suburban little house with a nice suburban little wife...

"So they think this'll stop me, huh?" Tony said, ignoring Knives. "Fools."

The door split down the middle, rending itself in two with a horrifying screech of metal. The two halves of the door folded gently back like the petals of a giant chrome flower.

Tony swayed slightly. "You're still weak," Knives said.

"Be quiet, false master," Tony snapped. "I am strong enough to do what my Master wills of me."

Knives sighed, and prayed quietly -- though he had no idea to what deity, since he didn't believe in any -- that he would be able somehow to help his friends and thwart whatever Tony and his master were planning. He still hoped he'd wake up and find that this had all been a dream, but he wasn't at all sure that he expected that to happen. He followed Tony onto the ship.

 

* * *

 

Angie had made a desperate, last-ditch attempt to understand the Genesis Machine.

Just as years ago, she'd run tests and diagnostics on the thing. It was partly made of Plant material, and partly of normal metal -- that she already knew. Much of it had been retrofitted into a weapon, a giant gun. She also knew that. But it was a gun that never needed to be reloaded, because it had just enough Plant matter in it to manufacture its own bullets. And, with the same ability, it could change shape between the easy-to-carry suitcase and the much more intimidating cross-shaped gun that Daniel had preferred.

Years and years ago, Alex Saverem had split the Genesis Machine into two parts, and given them to his children. Daniel -- Chapel -- had turned both into weapons, hoping to take advantage of the power of the Plant contained within them, in order to create a super-weapon. But he'd had only partial success. When he finally gave Karen's half of the machine to her son, Nicholas, he hadn't told the boy about any of the machine's special properties. He'd warned Angie not to talk, either. He was afraid Nicholas would unlock the secrets of the Genesis Machine and possess all that power.

 _Is that what it's about?_ Angie thought. _Power? Energy? Is that the only secret of the Genesis Machine?_

Finally, sad and scared and desperate, she took the unfolded Genesis Machine in her arms and carried it to the chamber of the Plant. As she drew closer and closer, she became aware of a sensation that she could only describe as a heavy weight pressed against the back of her eyes. It felt like an incipient migraine, like a powerful change in air pressure before a tornado.

Angie had never been susceptible to Plant communication, unlike many other people she'd known. Some humans could enter the Plant chambers and commune with them. They described the feeling as a oneness with nature, a feeling that transcended drugs or religion. Angie had never experienced that. She'd never been completely sure if the Plants were sentient beings or not.

But she could feel this, and she had no doubt that the Plant was trying to prevent her from bringing the Genesis Machine any closer. If she'd been susceptible to the Plants' mental communication, she wondered if she might be rolling on the floor with pain.

"Listen," she said aloud. "I need your help. We all do."

The pressure did not lessen, but she ignored it, and carried the cross over the threshold of the Plant's room. The light bulb in the middle of the room was alive with energy, the Plant clearly anxious and agitated.

"I don't care," Angie said firmly. She crossed the room and laid the Genesis Machine down under the light bulb. "You know what this is. You know what this does. If you don't tell us, we're all going to die. Including you. Do you understand death?"

She stared up into the seething brightness until her eyes watered, but felt nothing, no enlightenment, only the gentle pressure on the back of her mind. The Plant must have been shrieking for her to even feel that much.

"Please," Angie said. "Help us."

She strove to penetrate the eye-watering blue glow. Was that a human shape inside the light? Was it watching her? Was it aware of her?

 _Behind you!_

The voice might have spoken aloud into her ear. But it wasn't a voice she knew. It wasn't a human voice. The Plant had spoken to her.

Compelled by that overwhelming sense of fear and urgency, Angie spun around, to be confronted with Vash and Sand.

She stared. "How'd you get in here?"

"Get out!" Vash cried, his blue eyes wide and panicked. "Angie. For the love of God! Run!"

Sand wearily tossed a white case down, where it clattered on the metal floor. Angie's eyes followed it in horror. The other half of the Genesis Machine. Oh, no. No.

"Angie, run!"

Angie started to back away. Sand raised her head. Her eyes flared blue, and Angie froze, paralyzed by the memory of that blue light falling across them.

"Angie!" Vash screamed.

The Plant was alive with blue fire. Lightning crackled from its surface, splintered across all nearby metal objects.

Angie backed away. She could almost hear the Plant screaming. Almost.

Suddenly the metal floor shuddered underfoot. Angie almost lost her balance.

Sand's head snapped up and she stared at the Plant. "What was that?" she demanded.

 

* * *

 

From the observation lounge, the observers watched Tony casually peel away the sealed door, like a man peeling an orange. The metal clattered in a heap behind him.

"Good lord," Wolfwood whispered.

"We have to stop him," Lamia said, but no one moved towards the door. Finally Wolfwood whirled.

"Stay here," he snapped at the women.

"Hey!" Lamia said. "What's this, some kind of chauvinist--"

She trailed off, rendered speechless (for a change) by the look in his eyes.

"This bastard killed my family," Wolfwood said quietly. "He's not leaving here alive. I don't care if it means I have to die again. It'll be worth it."

"Nicholas," Millie said.

It was the first, and only, time she had ever spoken his first name. He looked at her with eyes full of pain, and said to both the women, "Protect the kid, would you?" Then he turned and ran out.

He went down the ladders and corridors, and each step he took was easier. Finally he reached the front hall. He saw Tony silhouetted in the streaming desert sunlight.

The ship shuddered underfoot and Wolfwood reached out, grabbed onto the wall for support. Unlike Angie, he didn't wonder about what was causing it. He was too busy staring at the man who had, directly or indirectly, been responsible for the shattering of his life when he was a child.

"Tony," he said. "Tony?"

The pale head came up; the yellow eyes stared at him.

"Who are you?" Tony Blanchard said.

"My name is Wolfwood. Nicholas Wolfwood."

Tony smiled slowly. "Ah. The missing child. Yessss...."

"I've seen what you did to my family."

"Oh, yes?"

"I'm going to kill you," Wolfwood said.

He realized, even as he said it, the futility of that casual statement. _He was unarmed._ He hadn't even thought about that before coming down here.

Oh, dear.

"Well, let's discuss that," Tony said quietly. "We can talk while we walk downstairs."

Wolfwood struggled, but his feet were moving in spite of himself.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Moron. Moron. Moron.

"So," Tony said conversationally, as they walked through the ship. "What brings you here, Nicholas?"

"Go to hell."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Such language."

"Who are you?" Wolfwood burst out. "I need to know."

"What are you talking about? You 'need' to know. I owe you nothing."

"You killed my family. You owe me an explanation." And your life, you bastard -- and I WILL take it somehow.

"Ah." Tony said nothing, for so long that Wolfwood finally looked back to see what he was doing. His head was bowed and he was looking at his hands.

"Maybe I do, after all," he said. "You see, your great-grandmother, Nadia Wolfwood, was my -- my -- _my_ lover. Love of my life. The mere thought of her kept me sane, throughout many, many years on this ship.

"But she was not true to me. She woke from our eternal sleep before I did, and took another lover, and had a child. She..." His voice trailed off, and Wolfwood heard pain, ancient pain. "I spent so long, waiting for her, but did she wait for me? No, not at all. I finally found her. She was old. Her children had children."

"So you killed them," Wolfwood said.

They turned a corner and bones confronted them, bones everywhere. An appropriate place for such a story, he thought grimly.

"I did," Tony said. "And then... what? I wandered, lost, for many years. I found a purpose for being, at last, here. I found a new life in the service of Our Master."

"Knives?"

"Don't speak his name!" Tony snapped.

"But I don't understand everything," Wolfwood said carefully. "How is it that you can do the things you do with your mind? Not everyone can do that." Nobody, frankly, except one person.

Tony laughed. "I have a computer chip in my brain," he said. "I was an experiment, to see if it was possible to use conditioning to train any human to use the abilities that Our Master's favored servant -- that I -- that he possessed naturally."

 _Legato,_ Wolfwood thought. He had no idea what a _computer chip_ was, but he thought he understood what it might do. "Mind control? Like the thing Zazzie the Beast had to control the sandworms?" he said. "That's vile."

"No. A recording. The same technology that we used to use back on Earth to teach lessons to schoolchildren. A chip containing recorded thought patterns is implanted into the student's head. Gradually those thought patterns become part of the student's own mind. It's the best way to learn a physical skill, like handwriting or drawing. Normally the brain would fumble around on its own until it came upon the right neurological pathways. This way, you bypass the fumbling stage and get right on with learning how to make it work."

"So you have a recording of Legato's ... thoughts ... in your head?" Wolfwood said. "That still sound vile to me."

"I am Legato," Tony said quietly. "In order to get to what makes those powers work, we couldn't stick to the surface thoughts, the way they used to do in the schools back home. It was necessary to take recordings of the deepest thought processes... down to the reptile hindbrain itself. The brain learns to follow the mental pathways that it's given."

"No... you're a psychopath with some of Legato's memories and delusions of grandeur. That doesn't make you him."

Nice going, Nicholas, he thought to himself, wincing. Make him mad...

But he had no opportunity to find out if he'd upset Tony or not. The ship shuddered violently and then began to tilt, and went on tilting. Wolfwood stumbled and fell into the wall, and for a moment he felt the control over him break. He stumbled and caught himself, and felt, as he did so, a small cold hardness against his leg.

That's right. His knife, in its leg sheathe. For a moment he recalled the day when he and Vash had gone up against the Murder Machines, he armed with nothing but Vash's knife, and he smiled faintly.

 _Are you even still alive, Tongari? Looks like things come full circle after all. I've got a knife. I can make this work. And if I don't... at least I'll die trying._

 

* * *

 

With the renewed shaking of the deck underfoot, Angie recovered from the paralysis holding her. She gave Vash a tormented look and then sprinted from the Plant chamber. Sand -- Knives -- didn't try to stop her. He was staring at the white cross on the floor, and the metal case beside it.

"At last," he whispered. "Reunited."

He reached down with his one remaining hand and pressed the buttons on the white metal case, causing it to spring open into its natural form.

Vash gasped. Knives ignored him. Yes, the shape that this half of the Genesis Machine assumed was the cross that Wolfwood used to carry -- that traitor.

Now... how did the two go together?

He was dimly aware of the Plant's agitation. However, she was powerless against him. She could not truly affect the material world. This was the price the Plants paid for their voluntary withdrawal from the physical world.

This Plant surprised him; she was far more interested in the lives of mortal beings than her kind tended to be. Still, she was only, ultimately, a means to an end.

This was the truth, the cold, hard, cruel truth that he had come to realize.

 _The Plants were no more advanced than the humans._

This had hurt, hurt so badly that he'd clung to blindness for many, many years. But it was true. The Plants, in their own way, were as cruel, as cynical, as blind and short-sighted as humans.

And they both had to go.

Something spoke deep inside his brain, saying, _This is wrong, wrong, wrong._ The same voice that had spoken before and stopped him from punishing Legato's inability to follow his commands.

 _Vash would say it is "Sand." But there is no "Sand."_

"Knives," Vash was saying. "Knives, please. Look at me."

Knives ignored him, kneeling beside the Machine.

"Knives," Vash cried. "But why do you want the Genesis Machine? Its nature is to destroy the Plants and create a paradise for humans -- the exact opposite of what you've been trying to achieve!"

Knives finally looked up, and shook his small, blond head, laughing softly to himself. Vash, too, suffered from the same flaw as them all: his vision fell short in the most critical elements. "How shortsighted you are. All the Genesis Machine does is harness the power of all the Plants, working together. What you choose to do with that power is up to the operator. Certainly, you could terraform this world... if you wanted to. But that burst of energy could also be used to cauterize the planet's surface of the human infection that has spread across it."

"But every Plant would die!"

"A necessary sacrifice."

"But -- I don't understand!" Vash cried. "Killing the spider to save the butterfly... I can almost understand that! It's despicable, but I can understand it! But this -- what do you strive for, if not to save your own kind?"

Knives shook his head. "You're right, you really don't understand. You never have, Vash. It has taken me a long time to realize this, a long, painful, soul-searching time -- but you and I are something new. Unique. Wonderful. The Plants are not our kind any more than the humans. Look at them! Fleeing from the world, hiding behind their shells of light. They don't know what we know: what it's like to feel the wind on your face, the sand beneath your feet! And what's worse, they deliberately turn away from it! Each one of them, like us, spends their infancy walking about the world. Then they turn their back on all its beauty and shut themselves into contemplation of their precious 'oneness'. Vash, I do not believe that the Plants are a pinnacle of evolution, and we, the land-bound form, merely a vestige of an earlier stage in their development. No -- we, you and I, are the higher, more evolved form! Every child is an experiment in evolution, combining the best traits of their parents. Creatures of flesh and creatures of light. Vash..." He held out his hand. Sand's hand. "All we have to do is cleanse the world. Wipe them away. All of them. Human and Plant alike. Then a new and better world will begin."

Vash slapped his hand away.

"You're insane. Insane to even contemplate something so horrible -- and crazier yet to think I'd join you."

"But I can't do it alone," Knives protested. "You and I -- we're meant to be together. We are part of one another. Don't you feel me in your head?"

"All Plants are part of one another! Don't you know that? If you think you'll survive their death, Knives, you're even crazier than I thought you were. Even if you survive the power surge, their death agony will cost you your mind."

"One must be strong, to start a new world."

The agitation of the Plant crackled in the back of his mind. And then he stumbled as the deck shifted under his feet.

Something was definitely happening.

 

* * *

 

The Plant didn't know a whole lot, as mortal beings counted knowledge. But she knew what she was meant to do. She knew her purpose.

She had not fulfilled her purpose in untold years. She didn't count time as mortals did; still, she was aware that time had passed, and that the ship that had once been her body was falling into disrepair. Trapped in her prison, she had been aware of each defect in its surface. Each tiny flaw in the vessel that she'd once been responsible for was magnified a thousand times in her awareness. It hurt, but she had learned to live with that pain.

Now this new pain, this fear, was beyond bearing, and she wondered -- was the source of the pain the fact that she hadn't fulfilled her purpose? If she only did what she was meant to do, could she find peace again?

For this ship, her body, was hurt -- but not incapable of flight.

 

* * *

 

The deck beneath Meryl's feet was alive, thrumming with energy.

She had met up with Millie, Lamia and Ellie, and together the group of them made their way deeper into the ship.

"You're alive!"

Meryl spun in shock, and saw Knives -- Knives! Alive! He was pale and covered with dirt and dried blood, but very much alive.

"You--" she began, but Lamia went flying past, and flung her arms around him. Knives staggered. "Ouch..."

Lamia let go immediately. "Sorry." She looked up at him. "It is you, isn't it?"

"As opposed to whom?" Knives asked dryly.

Angie came around a bend in the corridor, and stopped, gasping, when she saw Knives. "Eric! You're all right!"

"Eric?" Meryl said.

"Long story." He smiled at her, and Meryl, shocked, realized that she no longer saw Vash in that smile. Not now that she'd seen Vash again, and touched him, and been assured of his reality. No... all that she saw now was Knives. Or whoever he was. A person who didn't really have a name.. but her friend, nonetheless.

The deck shuddered underfoot and they all staggered.

"What's going on?" Millie asked, clutching Ellie.

Angie looked around nervously. "I think... it's almost like it's trying to take off."

"Take off?" Meryl echoed. "What do you mean?"

Millie seized Meryl by the arm. "Never mind all that! Nicholas -- we have to find Nicholas!"

Meryl didn't comment on her recent switch to his first name. She had an inkling of why... she'd discovered Vash again, after all. "Fine. C'mon."

"No, wait--" Angie said. "There's something important--"

They rounded a corner and they were in the chamber of bones. And then the first real shock happened. One end of the floor they were standing on started to lift -- and went on lifting -- and lifting --

Bones tumbled past them, a hundred bones, a thousand bones, falling crazily, their careful patterns broken into chaos. Millie screamed and reached for Ellie. Meryl gasped as something hard hit her in the head and she saw stars.

They were all falling and fetched up in various places, tangled in a mess of bones. Meryl raised her head and saw light, and thought, _I've been hit in the head and I'm seeing things..._ But she wasn't seeing things. The side of the ship, right in front of them, was coming away from the mountain. The huge gash that had been torn in the metal skin by the rocks was slowly peeling away... and light streamed in, and Meryl could see blue sky through it, and feel, underfoot, a steady shuddering of the deck, and feel its tilting, and she thought, insanely, _We're flying..._

 

* * *

 

Vash and Knives were pitched across the deck. The crosses both skittered across the floor in different directions.

Vash picked himself up and started towards Knives, who was grimly rearranging the crosses as best he could with only one hand.

"What are you doing?" Vash yelled at him. Knives ignored him. Vash seized him by the shoulders, trying not to see the girl's face, trying to focus through it, onto his brother's mind.

"The reaction must have a catalyst!" Knives snapped.

"Who -- the Plant? That would destroy her! That's murder!"

 _But what's the death of one Plant, when he's planning on killing them all,_ Vash thought. _Along with the humans. Meryl was right. I deluded myself if I ever thought he could change..._

But Knives had never seemed that crazy before. Vash stared at him, wishing that he could understand.

 _What has he done to himself? He had to have been paranoid, more paranoid than I ever dreamed, to take such a drastic step as trying to grow himself a new body. How did he even imagine such an impossible thing would work?_

But it had worked.

The deck tilted again and they both went tumbling across the room. We're airborne, Vash thought in disbelief. He could feel the strain throughout the entire vessel, or rather, what was left of it. Vash tried to imagine what it must look like -- a battered, rusted wreck, rising slowly over the mountains. Probably enough to terrify anyone in the vicinity.

 _What is she doing, though?_ he thought wildly, staring at the Plant. _She can't be planning to go to space, can she? The ship can't possibly withstand hard vacuum in the shape it's in. It'll decompress and we'll all --_

\-- we'll all die --

He looked again at Knives, Knives in Sand's body. _And the human race, the Plant race, will both be saved._

Killing the spider to save the butterfly.

But he couldn't let it end like that. He'd had too many of those decisions to make in his life, and always, always, he'd tried to choose the right path. The lesser of two evils was still evil. Two wrongs never make a right.

 _Oh, Rem... what's the right thing to do?_

But he knew, and he managed to get to his feet on the shuddering deck, and stumbled towards the Plant. The ship lurched and he almost fell, but he caught himself with one outflung hand on her glass shell. Energy crackled over his fingers, so intense it hurt. She was in danger of overloading herself. Space wouldn't have a chance to kill them -- the Plant would blow them up along with herself if she didn't calm down.

"Stop!" Vash cried, trying to radiate a calm he didn't feel. "It's all right, Sister! Easy! Take us back down."

He couldn't tell if he'd had any effect, but the ship seemed to level off. He could tell they were still moving, probably at a horrifying speed, but they didn't seem to be headed for outer space anymore.

*Well played, brother. You made the right choice.*

Vash, startled, looked into Sand's wide blue eyes.

What? he thought.

*You heard me.*

It _was_ Knives talking to him. But the link between them had never been that strong. A general awareness of each others' presence, sometimes a feeling that the other was hurting or in danger... that was as far as it went.

Or maybe... Knives had never been this powerful before.

*It has nothing to do with that*, Knives thought impatiently. *I've finally begun to master the limitations of this physical form. We are energy beings, brother. Matter, shape and space are nothing to us. Raised by humans, we thought of ourselves as humans, and never dared to explore the true reality of all we can be. We do not need lips to communicate, or feet to travel, any more than the Plants do. But at the same time, we can only realize our full potential in partnership with a physical form.*

*All Plants are born in physical bodies, don't you know that, Brother? Ask any Plant technician... better do it quick, though, since I'm about to kill them all. Normally the Plant abandons its landbound form quickly, voluntarily, seeking union with the others of its kind.*

*But that preference for energy over matter makes the Plants as blind, as limited, as human beings with their pathetic physical form. Don't you see? Without a physical body to take refuge in, a Plant is at the mercy of the physical world. They need to be contained in glass or they would eventually disperse among the energy of the cosmos, if they let themselves. Yet they are afraid of physical bodies, repulsed by them.*

*Do you see, brother?* Sand's eyes were alive with blue light, but the rest of her face was horribly slack and dead. For a moment, Vash saw a glowing corona around her -- and, just for an instant, a spark of renewed life in her face. Sand -- was she still alive in there? Then the glowing corona faded back into her body.

Knives reached out his blood-stained hand -- the small, girl's hand -- and touched Vash's face. *This physical body is only a shell we wear. You could be free of it, but you need not abandon the physical world that you so love. The best of both worlds, that's what we are. A perfect union of the physical and spiritual--*

"Shut up!" Vash screamed aloud.

He could barely speak for his fury. "All I see is that you've chosen to become some kind of -- of demon, stealing physical bodies to suit yourself! How dare you suggest that I'm like you!"

*The interesting thing* Knives mused, ignoring Vash's outburst. *The interesting thing is that the body I used to wear, abandoned by me, seems to have spontaneously developed a personality in my absence. How very interesting. I'll have to keep it around to find out why...*

Vash stared at him in mingled horror and disbelief.

"Can you just -- leave your body, like that? Take -- take over another?"

Knives shook his head. *It's not easy at all. It took me years to figure out how to do it. And it's not possible to enter a body that already has a personality. It fights back. That's why I was preparing child bodies for myself. The first and only time that I've really, truly made that switch was after our fight at Demetery. I didn't even know what I was doing, really, or how I did it. And once I came back to myself enough to realize what had happened, I didn't know how to get back.*

"But there was already a personality in the child's body -- it had only just begun to form."

*An aberration* Knives retorted. *It grew while my strength returned. You see, I am a part of this body now -- my energy suffuses its entire form. Without that energy, the being you persist in calling "Knives" is no more than a human. Just an empty physical shell.*

Or, Vash thought, it's Knives as he could have been -- the same mind, the same emotions, but with a fresh start, without the abuse and fear he received on the ship.

*I'm gaining more control each day* Knives said. *I think I'm getting closer and closer to understanding what we can do. The Genesis Machine won't harm us, Vash, because we have physical forms -- we're not pure energy. We can use it to purify the world and start over. A fresh start, just as you were thinking just now -- but for an entire planet! Imagine it!*

"Genocide," Vash whispered. "Your vision is horrible, Knives."

Knives stared back at him, and suddenly Vash had the weird, unsettling feeling that he was no longer looking into Knives' eyes.

"Knives?"

"Not anymore," said Sand's soft voice. "No.. not anymore. I won't let him win. I won't ... I won't!"

Then the ship plowed headlong into a mountain.

 

* * *

 

The ship lurched violently underfoot. A hail of flying bones deluged Wolfwood and Tony, and Wolfwood realized that he was still free of Tony's control.

Run or fight?

It wasn't much of a choice.

Knife in hand, he threw himself at the smaller man, knocking Tony over. The floor was now tilted at an extreme angle and the two of them started sliding uncontrollably. The ship was tilted on its long axis and there was nothing to stop them from falling into its dark, damaged depths--

\-- until it leveled off.

Wolfwood and Tony tumbled apart. Wolfwood had only managed to graze him with the knife, leaving a bloody streak across his cheek.

"Fool," Tony said wearily.

Wolfwood felt his hand twist, the knife fall from his suddenly boneless fingers. Damn, he thought. Oh, well. I've died once... they say everything is easier the second time around...

They'd fallen a long way down the ship, he realized. Although it was difficult to recognize anything, with the bones tossed around like driftwood, he thought they were near the place where his family had been interred. And realized that he was right when he found himself force-marched by Tony towards the very familiar, still-intact capsules.

 _No... I don't want to see..._

But they were still there... his mother and father, his brother and sister, his grandmother, his cousin Lucas. And the empty casket with his name on it.

He discovered that Tony's inescapable will was forcing him towards that.

"Hey!" Wolfwood gasped.

Tony was smiling, a grim smile, his yellow eyes flaring with malice. "I've waited thirty years for this. Nadia's entire line of descendants. Everything she created. Wiped out."

 _Not Ellie, you bastard._ But he didn't even dare _think_ it too loudly. _Oh, Millie, take our daughter... take her someplace safe and don't ever let him find out..._

He cried out and struggled, but his body was forced forward. Now Tony was trying to get him to enter the capsule -- still alive; he didn't even want to think about what Tony had in mind -- and he could fight this a little better. Tony was good at gross motor control, but controlling the small muscles for fine movements -- that, he wasn't so good at. Wolfwood could only manage sharp, uncontrolled jerks of his body, but those were sufficient to keep twisting his body so that Tony couldn't get him into the small space.

"This is ridiculous," Tony snapped, and Wolfwood felt a great pressure, like a hand pressing upon him. Obviously Tony was giving up on the delicate route and resorting to brute force. The edge of the capsule door was pressing into his elbow; the sensation grew rapidly from discomfort into agony, and he realized, in horror, that Tony had every intention of forcing him into the capsule even if it tore his arms off.

His head was already inside. He could see nothing but darkness, feel nothing but the pain of his body being compressed. Claustrophobia descended onto him, suffocating him.

 _This is it... this is how I die..._

A gunshot rang out and echoed, echoed, echoed down the great space of the ship's interior.

Wolfwood gasped and fell as the pressure on his body was released. Turning his head -- the only movement he could manage at the moment -- he saw Tony frozen, half-turned, blood running down one of his arms. Beyond him, Meryl was standing with one foot braced firmly on a pile of bones, a derringer in each hand.

"Damn!" she yelled, shooting again. The rolling of the ship was throwing off her aim, and this time she missed Tony entirely.

Behind her, Wolfwood saw Millie, with Ellie, and Angie, and ... Knives?

"You bitch," Tony snarled, and Meryl dropped the guns and fell to her knees, screaming as her hands were twisted backwards.

But now Wolfwood was free and he jumped at Tony, not really sure what he meant to do, just determined that somehow, he was going to stop this crazy bastard.

But he never actually hit Tony, because the ship hit something. There was a horrid screech of metal and the deck yawed crazily to the side, and sunlight streamed in upon them as the metal was peeled back. The ship rolled back and they got a wild view of rocks streaming by, impossibly fast, and for a moment it seemed that they were about to tumble out that hole, but then the ship tilted again and they all sprawled on the deck, shaken.

Wolfwood picked himself up slowly. Wind screamed through the opening. He could see the ragged tops of mountain peaks whipping by. _God, are we flying...? -- this isn't possible --_ and then the ship hit another mountaintop, but this time the damage was somewhere else, and the scream of the tortured metal was transmitted through the ship's hull to vibrate beneath their feet.

Wolfwood stared out the hole in the side and thought, _We're gonna crash. There's no two ways about it. No way we can survive this._

He looked around wildly for the others. Tony was climbing to his feet, unharmed, his attention fixed on Meryl Stryfe. He had forced the guns from her hands and lifted her off the floor. Wolfwood realized with shock that he appeared to be planning to throw her out the side.

Millie gave a piercing scream. She, Angie, Lamia and Ellie were all being dragged in similar fashion. Knives grabbed hold of Millie, the nearest person to him, bracing his feet and trying to stop her progress. She screamed again and started trying to fight him off.

Even as horror gripped Wolfwood, he realized something. _Tony's much, much weaker than he used to be._ Millie had told him about Tony killing the Bad Lads from the inside out. If he could do such a thing, surely he would have done it by now -- just as he'd been unable to control Wolfwood's smaller movements, he was apparently able to do little more than manhandle the women around. And Meryl's progress had slowed to a crawl -- as if handling the other three at the same time was taxing him to his limits. Throwing them off the ship might be the only way he could kill them now.

Of course, at the height they were and the speed at which they were moving, being thrown out was fatal enough for anyone's taste.

Wolfwood picked up what looked like a thighbone off the floor (sending a brief, apologetic prayer to the previous owner's soul) and moved towards Tony as quietly as possible. He swung -- but felt a barrier slam into him, knocking him backwards and knocking the impromptu weapon out of his hands. He sprawled onto the shuddering deck.

Tony looked over his shoulder, his yellow eyes expressionless. "Did you truly believe I'd forgotten about you?"

But when he took his attention off the others, his control wavered and Millie and Angie broke free. Millie swung out her shotgun and fired at him. Tony deflected it, but he was forced backwards, towards the hole in the side of the ship.

Aha! Wolfwood thought.

Meryl had managed to grab hold of a metal spire projecting from one side of the ship's great interior -- evidently something to hook more of the capsules onto. It looked slender from this distance but was actually almost as thick as Meryl's body, and she was trying to hook herself around it, making it impossible for Tony to keep moving her while she tried to fumble out another gun.

 _Don't!_ Wolfwood thought at her desperately, but he didn't dare shout it out loud. If Tony had been willing to tear Wolfwood's arms off to force him into the capsule, then he would probably be happy to force her against the spire until she died.

"Tony," said Knives.

He walked forward, stepping carefully around the bones.

"Stay away from me, false master," Tony hissed.

"I order you to let these people go."

Tony laughed. "I don't have to obey you! I obey my true master, and that is--"

"No one!" screamed a voice from behind Knives.

Angie was struggling forward. "Tony! Tony Blanchard! You're the captain of Project Seeds Unit 423! You don't take orders from anyone!"

Tony faltered, and, seizing the opportunity, Knives jumped at him. The two of them toppled to the very edge of the gaping hole in the side of the ship. They struggled, throwing themselves back and forth, near to the edge, then farther away.

Wolfwood hesitated. _They could both fall... wouldn't we both be safer that way..._

 _But Vash... Vash would never speak to me again..._

Damn Tongari ... how does he manage to put me in these situations?

"Wolfwood!"

He turned, in shock, to see that Millie had made her way to his side.

She put her lips against his ear. "Tony fell off a cliff. And he's back. _He didn't die._ If they fall, Tony won't be gone."

Wolfwood stared at her. "I never thought I'd hear you suggesting killing someone, Millie."

"He threatened my daughter," Millie said simply.

Wolfwood stared at her, thinking, _Damn, I'm glad she wasn't mad at me for being dead. At least, I think she wasn't mad at me..._

He looked up just in time to see Tony throw Knives over the edge. Blond hair whipping in the wind, not making a sound, Knives vanished.

Tony stood frozen for a minute, and Wolfwood thought, _He didn't mean to do that, did he...?_

"Tony," Angie said, starting to approach him.

He looked at her, his yellow eyes blazing. There was nothing even remotely sane in his face. Crouching on the very lip of the hole in the ship's side, apparently oblivious to the wind tearing at his body, he placed both hands on the deck.

"All this power," he said softly, and laughed. "All this power, and nothing to do with it... except die."

"Tony!" Angie yelled. "What are you doing!"

But it became apparent as the ship lurched and rolled. He was using his power on the whole, damaged, rusting hulk... and, impossibly, it was responding.

He was trying to make them crash.

The ship tilted again and they all tumbled towards the opening -- except Meryl, still gamely clinging to her spire, who could only watch in horror as her friends fell.

Tony, perched on the edge, laughed.

Wolfwood sprawled at the edge of the opening, catching Millie and pushing her back. Then he saw something astonishing.

The metal side of the hull was peeled back, and there, clinging to the ragged metal, was Knives.

He had only fallen a few dozen feet, and now he was trying to crawl back to the opening. Blood trailed from his palms, where the torn metal had lashed them to ribbons. He was clearly exhausted. Each time he took a new handhold, his grip was a little looser, as the screaming wind flattened him against the side of the ship.

Wolfwood took a deep breath, and thought of Knives and Vash, of guns and crosses and trust and betrayal, of the future of humanity, of choices and decisions. And extended his hand.

Knives lunged and caught it. For a moment they were suspended above the ground, and the wind was screaming so loudly that time seemed to stop and they existed in a dreamlike silence. Then the ship rolled the other way and they both tumbled back across the deck, sprawling against Millie. The straining of the ship's engines was audible, vibrating through the stressed metal.

Wolfwood turned to look towards Tony just as they hit another mountaintop. Tony didn't see it until too late. The wall of rock hurtled towards them, unstoppable as a freight train... Tony started to turn but even his reflexes weren't fast enough... the ship tore across the mountain with a horrible scream of tortured metal... and when they ripped across and through, the hole in the hull had been gouged and widened, and all that remained of Tony was a little blood on the deck.

Millie gave a small, startled shriek. Wolfwood just stared.

He crawled to the edge, half expecting that Tony would be clinging to the side, as Knives had been. But it wasn't possible. There was just enough left of Tony, spread across the hull, that it was quite evident he wasn't coming back from this one.

Wolfwood scrambled away from the side and looked around at the others.

Angie was holding Ellie, with the child's face buried in her side, clearly in a state of shock. Meryl was trying to get down from the spire. Millie was picking herself up, turning to see about Knives, who was futilely trying to wipe the blood off his lacerated palms. Dimly, Wolfwood was aware of a sickening drop in his stomach -- but he'd never been in a plane or an express elevator, so he wasn't familiar with that sudden falling feeling, unaware that the ship was losing altitude at a horrifying rate.

We did it, he thought. We won.

Then they crashed.

 

* * *

 

The collision sheared off two entire decks and ripped open the ceiling of the Plant's chamber. A massive fracture tore down the side, and debris avalanched inward, burying Vash and Sand.

A beam slammed into Vash's head and for a moment his consciousness scattered, but he managed to drag himself back -- back to the screaming of wind blowing through the opening in the hall, back to the sight of Sand, looking like an angel with her flying golden hair, struggling out from under the massive pieces of metal.

"Sand --" he gasped. "Is it you? Or my brother?"

"Me. I mean, Sand." Sand was shivering with the effort of maintaining control. "I never went away. I've heard everything he said, saw everything he did. I... I won't let this happen! I can't hold out for very long, but --"

She cast about for the Genesis Machine. She found one of the giant crosses free of the debris, and the other partially buried. She dragged it out.

"Sand! What are you doing?"

"It's my Voice, isn't it? I'll deal with this. It's not your turn, Vash. Stop trying to be the hero!"

Sand grabbed the giant crosses, one in her remaining hand, the other under her arm, and struggled toward the giant hole in the ship's hull.

"No!" Vash screamed, struggling to free himself from the rubble.

Sand's thin body was framed in the sunlight streaming in through the ragged hole. Wind tore at her clothing, and she braced against it, trying to keep her precarious grip on the crosses.

"No!" With a tremendous effort, Vash wrenched himself free of the debris, screaming in pain as his newly healing skin was torn off in sheets by the ragged edges of metal. He flung himself towards Sand just as she leaned forward, wind-streamed blond hair shining in the sun, her body relaxing as she no longer fought the wind but let it catch her, and Vash found himself thinking, _Is this my destiny -- always reaching, always too late, too late --_

As Sand's blond head vanished against the blue, blue sky, Vash lunged and caught Wolfwood's Cross Punisher by the very tip of its long arm -- with his mechanical hand, fortunately, since the combined weight of the two crosses and Sand's momentum would have broken every finger on a normal human hand. The weight slammed into him and flattened his body to the floor. Vash braced his legs against the jagged edges of metal and leaned cautiously over, looking down.

The wind caught his hair and savaged his face with it, bringing tears to his eyes from the stinging pain. They could already have crossed half the world at the speed they were moving. The ground scrolled by, unimaginably far below. Mountain peaks rose, terrifyingly close, and then fell away. Below him, Sand was like a rag doll, battered by the wind. Yet she clung tenaciously to the cross in Vash's hand, and kept the other one clamped tight against her side.

"Drop it!" Vash screamed. The wind tore his words away as they left his mouth and he wasn't sure she could hear him -- wasn't sure she was still conscious to hear him. "Drop the cross! I can pull you up with this one, but together, they're too heavy!"

Slowly Sand's head turned and she looked up at him. Through a cloud of lashing blond hair, her blue eyes were clear.

"And then what?" she yelled back. "A thing that can destroy our kind -- loose somewhere on this world! And the evil that lives in me will still be there, looking for a way to do just that ..."

They flew through a rare cloud, and the moisture dampened Vash's dry lips, sent beads of water skittering from the metal of the cross. The wind seemed to pierce his face with needles of ice. "There's another way! There has to be! You... my brother... please..."

"There is no other way! Let go of me, please. Knives and I will destroy this thing together. You've done enough, Vash. Let us fight this f--"

Her words broke off in a scream. A mountain peak loomed before them at a dizzying angle. Vash caught a wild glimpse of rocks, close enough it seemed they would scrape the skin off his face -- then one side of the ship slammed into something unseen, and the deck rolled wildly. His grip on the wet and freezing cross slipped. He caught a last glimpse of Sand's face, smiling at him, and then her body tumbled into the maelstrom of wind. The ship rolled, and for a moment all he could see was blue sky -- then it rolled again, and Vash caught himself to keep from falling out as suddenly the desert loomed beneath his head. He could still see Sand falling, falling, tucking her little body into a ball, hugging the crosses to herself. The great arms of the crosses, thrust out to either side, made her look like a strange, exotic insect, and Vash had one brief moment in which to hope that somehow they could combine to slow her fall -- when light blossomed out from the tumbling figure of girl and machine, blue light filling the entire world.

The ship rocked again with a hideous screech of metal, and dropped sickeningly -- Vash was lifted into the air, and it felt as if they dropped several thousand feet before there was another bone-jarring crash. The ship skipped and skittered, the deck tilted at a 90-degree angle and Vash had to catch hold again to keep from being flung out the hole. Through the opening he caught crazy glimpses of sky and rock, sky and rock, like a movie projector broken and spinning out of control.

The ship sheared off to one side, debris went flying through the air, there was a final sickening crunch and, suddenly, they weren't moving anymore.

Vash found that he was lying on his back, gasping for breath. All he could see through the opening was sky. He couldn't tell if they were on the ground or dangling from a mountain peak ten thousand feet above the desert floor. And, at the moment, he didn't care. He wondered briefly if Sand had done the task wrong, if the blue flash he'd seen had not been the Genesis Machine being destroyed, but the thing coming to life -- if even now, a wave of energy was about to roll over him and smother him. He would have welcomed it if it had.

But nothing happened. He was alone in the chamber. Alone... with the Plant.

Her glow, which had flickered almost to nothing after the crash, began slowly filling the room again -- a light bulb turning up the voltage. Vash got to his feet, slow and shaky. He hurt all over, but worst of all was the deep emptiness inside.

Everything he touched turned to ashes.

He limped slowly over to the giant lightbulb, beyond tears, beyond fatigue, and stood looking up at her. The Plant's housing seemed undamaged. As for the Plant herself -- well, only they could judge such things. At least she wasn't screaming anymore.

"But I'm not one of you, am I," Vash said aloud, bitterly. "I'm not human, not Plant... I'm just the Humanoid Typhoon, the man who destroys cities."

 _My brother is dead... truly and finally..._

The Plant settled down to the bottom of her glass bell. She seemed to be looking at him. Overlaid on her face, Vash could see his own reflection in the glass, a vision of what she must be seeing -- a skinny blond coatrack of a man, tattered and bleeding, face gaunt with despair.

No wonder the Plants had turned away from him.

But this one wasn't turning away. Instead, she reached out, touching the glass. Startled, Vash touched it back. It was the first time that any of them had ever initiated contact with him. Always before, they had been responding to his clumsy attempts to communicate. He'd been under the impression that they could not even perceive the beings, such as humans, that existed in normal space and time, at least not to the point of understanding them to be fellow thinking, living creatures.

The light washed down and around him. It wasn't like any Plant contact that he'd experienced before -- which had always been a wordless, healing exchange, the Plant sharing its energy with him as he shared his with it. This was focused, purposeful. Although he'd always believed that the Plants did not experience want or desire -- this Plant seemed to want something from him.

Vash closed his eyes and stopped pushing against it, gave himself over to the light raining down from the Plant. Light washed over him, through him... shone through his closed eyelids as if his eyes were open. He might have fallen, might have hit the floor. He wasn't sure.

Vash opened his eyes and a woman was standing there, clothed in light, smiling at him.

She looked a little like Rem, a little like Meryl, but it was hard to say more. Her features had an odd way of shifting around on her face, as if human skin was an unaccustomed suit of clothing, and she had to keep smoothing out wrinkles.

"Uh... hi," Vash said.

"Hi," she said, still smiling. Even her voice sounded a bit like Rem.

She must be using my memories to communicate with me. Or maybe this is only something my brain is creating to cope with the unfamiliar input.

But I'm like her. I'm one of her people. It shouldn't be so hard for me to communicate with them...

Knives couldn't be right...

The woman slowly lost her smile. She seated herself, folding her legs neatly under her. She seemed to be sitting on pure light. Vash hesitantly did likewise.

"Where are we?" he said.

The woman tilted her head to one side, looking confused. "Where?"

"This place, what is it?"

"You are still thinking of yourself as attached to time and place. Trying to filter the world through a mortal body's eyes. It doesn't have to be that way."

Vash blinked. It was a bit disconcerting, after having her merely stare at him and mimic his words, to have her come out with a speech like that.

"I've never spoken to a Plant before," he said. "I've shared energy with them..."

"Yes. That is true communication. This... this is clumsy. It is like... crawling after you have flown? Yes. Like that. It is a poor substitute for oneness in crippled beings who are... "

She hunted for the word, struggling to express in words a concept her people did not have.

"...Separate," she said at last.

"So all Plants are joined," Vash said. "I'd suspected it."

"I do not understand," she said. "Joined? Connotations of ... physical beings coming together ... ah. Perhaps that is close enough. You do not understand oneness?"

"I've felt it," Vash said, remembering, with a pang, the feeling of enfolding acceptance that he'd experienced from the Plants in the past.

There was none of that here. This Plant's level gaze was not hostile, but not particularly friendly either.

"You... and the one you call Knives ... you are not part of the oneness. That's wrong. That's not how we are meant to be. It... I don't know the word. It hurts us?"

"Hurts you? What do you mean?"

She shook her head, frustrated. "This is such a terrible way to communicate. Causes us... despair? No. We don't feel anything like what you mean by that word. There is only lack of oneness. This disrupts us. Yes, that's more like what I mean. It separates us from the oneness. The missing ones are disrupted worse than the rest."

"The missing ones?"

The Plant raised her hands in exasperation. "I can't explain anything this way!" She reached out her hand and suddenly he saw a blaze of blue light, people running, buildings falling down -- for a horrifying instant he thought it was July, but then he began to recognize landmarks. He was looking at March City, and the final death throes of the Plant. At the same time he felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Not all of it was his own.

The vision faded.

"Missing..." Vash said. "You mean... dead."

"We know only separation," the Plant said. "To voluntarily separate oneself... that is insanity. Yet so many of our people are going insane. And you are the cause!"

Vash recoiled. "That can't be!"

"Like ripples in a pond," the Plant said softly, "your presence has spread among our kind... slowly, slowly, but we can all feel you, more and more. We are all one. So you must be part of us. But you are not like us. This has driven some of us insane."

Vash felt tears begin in his eyes. Never... he'd never imagined anything like this. "Sister, I... I never meant..."

"I know," she said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

Vash pressed his hands against his face. From the darkness behind his eyes, he saw Rem's face form, and desperately he asked her: _What can I do, Rem? How can I ever make THIS right?_

The dream-Rem only smiled at him, and turned her face away.

 _What does that mean, Rem? Are you angry at me? Do you blame me, too?_

But the dream-Rem was looking into a scene Vash recognized from his own memory. It was the destruction of March City, as he'd seen it earlier visualized by the Plant, but this time he saw the people of the city running, terrified; the man who had been terribly burned; the thousands who would be left homeless or starve. And he realized something:

The Plants didn't care.

The welfare of humans was unimportant to them. They neither understood nor cared that human existence on this world was entirely dependent on them. The Plant engineers used Plant energy to terraform worlds, but the Plants didn't even realize that it was being done. Or if they did, they didn't understand.

He opened his eyes.

"Your pain hurts me," Vash said simply. "Maybe that is what you mean by oneness. But the humans' pain hurts me, too. When the Plant in March City died, she took several humans with her. She had no concern for their lives as she lashed about in her death agony. That's just as wrong."

The Plant looked at him blankly. "Those beings were not part of the oneness. Their deaths should not hurt us."

"But they're living beings. They deserve to live just as much as we do."

"But they are not part of the oneness," the Plant repeated, still confused.

"They are living beings like you. I don't know what I can do, but I have to help them, just as I have to help the Plant kind."

"But... if you stay apart from the oneness, we will continue to feel your ... apartness. We can't bear it. It hurts us."

"Maybe if you sever yourselves from me..." His heart panged at the thought.

"How horrible!" she protested. "We don't know how to do that!"

"Then maybe I could open myself up somehow, so you could look inside me... After all, people always fear what they don't understand. Perhaps if you could understand what it's like to be separate from a unity, it wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't think that's possible."

"Can you try? You say that we are one. Let me show you what it means to be human. Maybe if you understand it, you won't be harmed by it."

"Maybe it will destroy us all," she said softly.

Vash held out his hand. "Please, Sister. This is as frightening for me as it is for you."

Hesitantly, she took his hand. Vash felt the blue light open up around him. Thoughts of July filled his head. He wanted, with all his heart, to pull his hand back and break the connection. But instead, for the first time, he didn't fight it. He let himself fall into the light... into his memories, his thoughts, his feelings. He knew the Plant was sharing them with him.

Her flawless face twisted. "What... what is that?"

"Loneliness," Vash said quietly.

"It's awful!"

"Yes, it is."

"Awful..." She broke away and rocked back and forth, clutching her head in her hands.

Vash knelt and put his arms around her. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Sister. But you must look deeper..."

"There's more...?"

"Much more," Vash said quietly, and he opened up to her as well as he knew how.

A long time seemed to pass, but there was no time in this place. And Vash found that he was crying, and so was the Plant. Tears of light slipped down her face. She seemed startled, reaching up and touching her face fearfully.

"Tears," Vash said.

"How can beings live like that?" the Plant asked him. "Unable to feel each other's presence... unable to communicate. How can they know anything about each other?"

"Because humans can't know each other, as your kind does, they must reach out beyond the limits of their skins in order to connect with others. It's clumsy, and hard and frightening for them."

"How awful..."

"But it's not. Look , Sister. Don't you see...? Don't you see the courage it takes for them to do that, unable to see under another's skin, never knowing if their fragile efforts will be slapped back ... or accepted, and allowed to thrive..."

She sat quietly, thinking about it.

"Can you show your people?" Vash asked her. "Show them what humans are... show them that humans are as much like you as they are different. Show them that you needn't be harmed by our presence."

"They already know, now that I know," she said, and added after a moment, "You must understand that I am not... entirely... I have more interest in humanity than most of my people. More awareness of them. My physical shell has been out in the desert for a long, long time. Sometimes I find... more interest in the physical than is normal for our kind."

Vash smiled past the pain in his heart. "So there is variation among you, as well."

She touched his face lightly with her long fingers.

"I do not think you're one of us any more ... Vash. You are as much of them as you are of us."

"But not really either," Vash admitted, feeling the old loneliness surge up until it threatened to overwhelm him. All his life, whenever living as a human had grown almost unbearable, he had held out to himself the thought of eternal peace in the blue light. It was hard to accept that he was no more accepted among the Plants than among the humans.

"No... don't think of yourself that way. A bridge, Vash. A bridge is what you are, between our two kinds. Of neither. Of both. Who knows what the future will hold?"

Someone was crying. Vash had to touch his own eyes to realize that it wasn't him.

"Who is that?" he asked the Plant.

She smiled faintly. "It must be time for you to go back to the humans."

"You're sad," Vash said, "but not sad to see me go, I think."

"You'd be wrong about that," the Plant said. "I... am glad that you've shown us the things that you did, I think. I don't know what will happen now. Maybe we'll change. Maybe we won't. Even we don't know the future."

"Thank you, too," Vash said, and added after a moment, "Thank you for giving me a purpose."

"A purpose?"

"To be a bridge. Like you said."

Then he felt something strike his face, hot and wet, and he realized that he wasn't in the light any more. He hurt. He hurt all over. He was aware of cold, hard floor under his back, and someone was crying.

"You ... stupid ... spiky-headed ... idiot! What did you think you were doing? What happened up here?" The voice was familiar, but through his haze of weariness, sorrow and physical pain, he couldn't figure out whose voice it was. Yet he sensed that it sounded... wrong. It was punctuated by harsh, heart-broken sobs. He felt more tears strike his face.

"Why did you go out there by yourself? Why do you always have to be the hero? What's wrong with you?"

He finally placed the voice. Meryl. And with that, he got up the strength to open his eyes.

Meryl screamed and flew backwards a good ten feet, falling to the floor on her backside. She put her hand over her heart, gasping.

"Va- Va- Va- Vash!"

"Are you all right?" he asked, sitting up.

"I -- I --" she stammered, staring at him. "I thought you were dead!"

"Why?" Vash said, confused.

"I-- I came up here and you were just lying there... not breathing... what am I supposed to think, you moron!" Her voice had risen to a yell and she scrambled to her feet.

Vash was almost relieved. It had freaked him out to see Meryl hurt, vulnerable and crying; seeing her red-faced with anger rather than tears had a pleasant rightness that put his personal universe back in order.

Meryl was still ranting. "--had no right, you broom-headed lunatic! What did you think you were doing, just lying like a lump and letting me make a total fool out of myself--"

"Were you worried about me?" Vash said.

Meryl stared at him, then picked up the nearest piece of debris and flung it. Vash dodged easily.

"How is everyone?" he asked her. "Are they all right?"

Meryl took a deep breath, sighed, appeared to get control of herself, and nodded. "Tony... Tony was..." She shook her head. "Tony is dead. And we seem to be on the ground again."

Vash nodded. "We -- we could be on the other side of the world."

Meryl half-smiled at him. "Why don't we go down and get the others, and find out ... shall we?"

 

* * *

 

When they arrived, the small group were taking stock of their injuries and tending to them. Lamia was binding Knives' wounded hands. Millie sat with Ellie on her lap, helping Wolfwood wrap up his leg, which had started bleeding again from the old gunshot wound. Angie was binding her own wrist, which had been sprained in the crash, using strips torn from her skirt.

"Everyone's all right," Vash said, with infinite relief.

They looked up. "Vash!" Angie cried gladly.

"Hey, Tongari," Wolfwood said. "Where's Sa--" He broke off, perhaps seeing something in Vash's face that gave him pause.

Angie pointed at the hole in the side of the ship. The way the vehicle had ended up laying on the ground, the hole was above them, and sunlight shafted down, sending beams through the clouds of dust raised by the crash.

"We can get out there, but I don't know how we can all get up to it," she said.

"You don't have to," Meryl said, smiling. "Where we just came from, there's a hole within easy reach -- in the Plant's room."

They all trooped up to the Plant chamber -- Vash noticing that she was quiescent again, her light dimmed -- and peered out.

Desert.

Big surprise.

"The moment of truth," Vash muttered, and lowered himself stiffly and painfully to the ground. Immediately he heard a _thunk!_ from behind him, then another _thunk!_ and a muffled _ow._

Vash looked around to see that Meryl and Wolfwood had joined him.

"Like we're letting you have all the fun, Tongari," Wolfwood said.

The ship had plowed into a sand dune, in the foothills of some range of mountains. Behind them, the peaks towered impossibly high against a blazing sky. In front of them, the sands stretched out in gently undulating ridges, to infinity.

"Where the hell are we?" Wolfwood said.

"We seem to have crossed at least a couple time zones," Vash said.

"Time zones?"

"Tough to explain."

"So when are you going to tell us what happened up there?" Wolfwood asked.

The others were letting themselves down. Millie climbed down first; then Lamia handed down Ellie, and gave Knives a hand, before jumping down herself. Angie followed.

Vash was oblivious to them, looking at Wolfwood with eyes full of pain.

"Dead," he said shortly. If he let himself start thinking about it -- start feeling it -- he wouldn't be able to function, and right now he didn't have that luxury.

"Sand?"

"And Knives. Well, the other Knives."

"Oh. Shit. Sorry, Tongari."

"I came in to find him flat on his back, with the Plant raining down light on him," Meryl said.

"The Plant spoke to me," Vash said. "It talked ... it... I..." Suddenly he began to feel like he was on the verge of understanding the whole thing, the comprehension that just might make his life meaningful -- and he had to talk about it, he had to try to explain, even if no one else on the planet could possibly understand. Before he knew it, he was babbling, as usual.

"I almost think Knives -- the other Knives -- has some of it right," Vash said. "The Plants _aren't_ the be-all and end-all of evolution. They're not higher than humans in any way. Just ... different. Maybe there's something better waiting for all of us many years down the road, or maybe we'll always just keep struggling along as we have been ... human and Plant alike ..."

His friends were staring at him quizzically. Vash smiled at them.

"I _like_ this," he said. "I _like_ being here. I _like_ being alive. Knives spoke the truth when he said I could have joined the Plants ... my ancestors ... whenever I wanted. I've actually known that for a long time. I could have made it all stop -- the pain, the doubt -- and just floated in endless contemplation as they do. But for me, it would have been endless loneliness. And guilt. I can't turn my back on the world and be happy. I'm just not like that. I've been among humans too long. And guess what?" He raised his arms skyward. "I don't believe ... the feelings I feel ... are a weakness. If anything, the weakness is in the Plants, who shun what they consider the failings of lesser species. All the Plants have the ability to walk the world in corporeal form as humans do. They just don't want to. But I like being here with all of you."

He stared up at the sky. There was a brief silence, and no one seemed to know what to say.

Wolfwood broke it.

"So if you're done pontificating, Tongari, some of us are getting hungry waiting for you to fini-- ow!"

"Shut up, idiot," said Meryl, who had driven her elbow into his side. But she bore a suspicious trace of a smile.

"Christ, woman! I'm injured!"

"Not as injured as you're going to be in a minute."

Suddenly Millie started laughing. Everyone looked at her.

"Do any of you know where we are?" she asked between giggles.

"Spit it out," Lamia said.

"We're about a day's walk from March City." Millie pointed. "It's right behind those hills."

They all stood and stared in the direction that she was pointing, and Wolfwood said, "By God, she's right. This is the badlands beyond the city. We've come home."

"But March City is dying," Meryl said. "When we were there, everyone was fleeing. Without the Plant, it's a dead place."

Wolfwood jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Yeah... so where do we know a Plant who isn't doing anything?"

Vash laughed. "That's a wonderful idea! I think she'd like to feel useful."

"So let's go," Lamia said.

"Hold on there, little buckaroo," Wolfwood said, easing himself down onto a rock and ignoring Lamia's annoyed glare. "If we just leave the ship here, we'll come back to find the thing gutted and all the lost tech gone, including the Plant. We'd better leave someone here to guard it. So the question becomes, which of us are healthy enough to walk out? I, for example, am not."

"He's right," Angie said.

"I'm fine," Lamia said, slinging her rifle across her shoulder, and stifling a slight wince as it hit a bruise.

"Vash can't walk that far," Meryl said.

"So how about this?" Angie asked. "Lamia and I will walk into town. When we get there, we'll hire a cab or something to come back out and get the rest of you."

Vash frowned. "Will you two be all right? You might meet bandits --"

Angie shook her head. "This is Bad Lad territory. Word will start getting around that the Lads are... gone, but at this point, it should be fairly safe. The most we might run into are scavengers drawn by the crashing ship, and they don't tend to be heavily armed."

Knives stood up, leaning on the side of the ship. "I can come with you."

"You look like you're about to fall down," Lamia said.

"I'm healing." To prove it, he flexed his arm, and gritted his teeth with pain.

"We can handle ourselves," Lamia said. "You don't have to be macho for us."

"I'm fine. I can do it."

Lamia and Angie looked at each other. "Well, if he really wants to come..." Angie said. "But we're not going to carry you if you fall down."

"I'll be all right. I promise."

"You know..." Lamia said, as the three of them began walking forward across the shifting sands. "We really need to think of a name for you..."

"Hey!" Wolfwood called, cupping his hands around his mouth. "If you three aren't back by noon tomorrow, we're sending somebody to find you!"

"We'll be fine!" Angie called back, waving. "Have the Plant whip us up a nice steak dinner! And keep it warm!"

"Can do! Take care, Angie!"

"For crying out loud," Lamia hollered over her shoulder. "You'd think we were leaving for years, not a day and a half!"

"Don't forget to write!" Meryl called, grinning.

The two groups continued to wave and exchange barbed comments until Angie, Lamia and Knives vanished over the dunes.

"I hope they'll be okay," Millie said.

"Trust me," said Meryl. "Lamia's too ornery to die."

Wolfwood laughed suddenly. "Hey, check it out."

"What?"

"We're all back together again. The Four Musketeers in the desert. Well, the Five Musketeers," he amended, with a soft glance at Ellie, who had crawled onto Millie's lap.

"I'm hungry," Ellie whined.

"I could eat a horse," Vash said.

"What's a horse?" Meryl asked.

"An Earth animal. I'll show you pictures sometime."

"Do they taste good?"

"Most likely not," Vash said.

Millie scrambled to her feet, letting Ellie down to the sand. "Well, why don't I go see what I can rustle up? I love these food-making machines! They even do the dishes! They might not have horse, though..."

"I'll help," Wolfwood said, with a sideways glance at Vash and Meryl. He held out a hand to Ellie. "Hey, wanna hold my hand, sweetheart?"

"No," Ellie said, hiding behind Millie.

"Here, I can help too--" Meryl began.

"No, no, no," Wolfwood said. "Sit. You two look worn out."

"We can manage fine," Millie said. "Come on, sugar, hold Daddy's hand."

"No."

"She'll come around," Millie said to Wolfwood, as they started to walk back into the ship. "She's at a difficult age, you know..."

"Hey!" Meryl called after them. "Hey! You two!"

"Oh, let them have some time together," Vash said, gazing up at the blue, blue sky.

"Time together, my butt. You know why they're leaving us alone together, don't you?"

"No, why?" Vash asked, looking at her with wide, innocent aqua eyes.

Meryl folded her arms and looked away. "I forgot how much you annoy me."

 _"I_ annoy _you?"_

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean, buster?"

"Nothing, nothing..." Vash looked away, eyes raised angelically.

Meryl sighed and kicked at a rock.

"So much has happened in the last few days," she said. "It's hard to believe that two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk sorting paperwork."

"Are you going back to Bernardelli's, do you think?"

"I don't know. I enjoy the work, but... it's easy to get stuck in a career rut. I never thought I'd say it, but I've missed being out in the open desert, feeling the wind in my hair..."

"The sand in your coffee," Vash said, grinning.

"Well, there is something to be said for civilization, I suppose," Meryl said. Then she noticed that his face had grown wistful.

"What's wrong?"

"Sand," Vash said, looking away. "I couldn't save her, Meryl."

"Oh, Vash. You try, but you can't be expected to save everybody. Nobody deserves a burden like that."

He shrugged, not looking at her.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" Meryl asked softly.

Vash hesitated, and shook his head. "No. Not yet. Maybe... someday."

Meryl's small hand reached across, and gently took his.

"We have time," she said.


End file.
